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The German 
Obsession 



William A. Fair burn 



The German Obsession 



William A. Fairburn 



; - 



The Nation Press, Inc. 
New York 




Copyright, 1918 
By William Armstrong Fairburn 

All rights reserved. 



oft -6 191.8 

©CI.A508413 



CONTENTS 

The Chosen People 1 

Atavistic Kultur 28 

The Hohenzollern Curse 50 



I. 



"The Chosen People" 

f 1 ^HE nationalism of Germany has shaken the 
entire world and plunged humanity into hor- 
ror and despair. Germany stands forth as a 
hideous example of an irreligious loyalty which 
deifies country, rulers and people, and in doing so, 
damns humanity and the soul of the world. It 
would be unfair to study the case of Germany as a 
pernicious example of exclusive and extreme nation- 
alism, if the evidence considered emanated from 
bitter enemies or malicious adversaries in the coun- 
tries with which she is at war. In such times as 
these, justice demands that Germany be given an 
opportunity to explain her attitude and ideals, her 
motives and actuating beliefs, and if Germans are 
placed on the witness stand to give testimony in a 
judicial consideration of the worth, nature and sub- 
stance of German nationalistic loyalty, we shall err 
on the side of the accused, whose actions have 
brought Teutonia before the bar of the peoples of 
the world and the tribunal of Humanity's God. 

Much of the testimony to be presented for con- 
sideration is the written word of Germans penned 
for the eyes of Germans and not for foreign circula- 
tion, for it is fairer to the German "loyalist" to per- 
mit him to explain his psychological attitude in his 
own way, and as we read we see Germany's soul in 
the mirror of Germany's own making. 

The Israelites in the early Old Testament days 



2 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



worshipped Yahweh, a tribal God, who fought with 
them in battle, harassed their enemies and advocated 
savage cruelty and a ruthless warfare of extermina- 
tion against all other peoples. The Jews have ad- 
vanced in their knowledge of God, but the concep- 
tion that they long since discarded the Germans 
have taken up, and thus we see the barbarities of 
millenniums past enacted in modern Europe and 
sanctioned by the "religious" leaders of a people 
cursed by their depraved and essentially inhuman 
nationalism. 

Prof. Werner Sombart in Hucksters and Heroes 
has said, "Now we understand why the other na- 
tions pursue us with their hatred ; they do not under- 
stand us, but they are sensible of our enormous spir- 
tual superiority. So the Jews were hated in an- 
tiquity because they were representatives of God on 
earth," and again, "A good Providence watches over 
the fate of the German people which is destined to 
the highest things on this earth." Pastor Rump in 
W ar Devotions declares that the Germans "have 
become heirs of Israel, the people of the Old Testa- 
ment covenant. We shall be the bearers of God's 
promises" and "Verily the Bible is our Book. It 
was given and assigned to us, and we read in it the 
original text of our destiny, which proclaims to man- 
kind salvation or disaster according as we will it" 
Pastor Tobzien in My German Fatherland says, 
"As was Israel among the heathen, so is Germany 
among the modern nations — the pious heart of Eu- 
rope." The Israelites, however, advanced beyond 
this crude, primitive conception of Yahweh, a tribal 
God, and their ethical prophets taught that there is 
only one God and He, a universal God of righteous- 
ness. The Germans still worship Odin, their tribal 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 3 



god of war, and to them in their egoistic hypocrisy, 
applies with peculiar emphasis the admonition of the 
real Judaic and Christian God of love. "When ye 
spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from 
you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not 
hear : Your hands are full of blood." ( Isaiah 1:15.) 

Dr. Preuss, the theologian, has written "The Ger- 
man people are the spiritual, the religious parallel 
of the people of Israel, they are 'the true Israel be- 
gotten of the spirit.' " And again, "It was the hid- 
den meaning of God that He made Israel the fore- 
runner of the Messiah, and in the same way He has, 
by His hidden intent, designated the German peo- 
ple to be His successor." What diabolical sacrilege! 
What insufferable national conceit and psycholog- 
ical viciousness ! But to prove that the sentiment is 
general, one has only to consult the German press, 
clerical and state utterances and Reichstag delib- 
erations. Francke said, "German craving for truth 
and German strength of faith working along Bib- 
lical paths have attained to the true faith, the pure 
religiousness . . . The Germans are the very 
nearest to the Lord and may claim that they have 
'continued His Word.' " 

Hauptmann, near the beginning of the war, 
averred that the "cultured" German soldier carried 
Nietzsche and the Bible in his knapsack, and Hen- 
ning states that in war time the Old Testament be- 
comes "the book for every day reading." Ernst V. 
Lasaulx in Philosophy of History (1856) tells us 
"It is no mere chance that the earliest piece of poe- 
try, the oldest three distiches of the Old Testament, 
the Song of Lamech, is a song of triumph over the 
invention of the sword (Gen. 4:22-24)." Thus in 
the middle of the nineteenth century we see for- 



4 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



saken the humane, ethical and spiritual teachings of 
Fichte, that great and loyal German nationalist, 
and the sword — which he used in defense of his 
beloved land, but nevertheless hated — becoming dei- 
fied in lieu of brotherhood and the spirit of the 
peaceful, loving Christ, — the sublime democrat of all 
ages. Fichte scathingly condemned the militaristic 
mania of Napoleonism, with its deification of brute 
force and physical might, and he urged his country- 
men to build a nationalism of culture upon a firm 
and lasting foundation of reality and spirit, with its 
universal truth, loyalty and world-wide humanity. 
Germany claims that her nationalism has been built 
upon the philosophical teachings of the noble Fichte, 
but materialistic Teutonism is diametrically opposed 
to the spiritual teachings of Fichte, who, in that 
period of national humiliation, when Berlin was 
occupied by the troops of Napoleon, sought to 
arouse his shackled and despoiled countrymen from 
their despair, and "replace what they had lost in 
physical resources, by moral strength.'' 

Fichte told the down-trodden and discouraged 
Germans that they must arise again, strong after 
their defeat ; and to inspire and encourage them to 
reconstructive action, he affirmed that it was "they 
on whom the future of the world depended." He 
also admonished his fellow countrymen to "Seek not 
to conquer with bodily weapons, but stand firm and 
erect in spiritual dignity. Yours is the greater des- 
tiny — to found an empire of mind and reason, to 
destroy the dominion of rude, physical power as the 
ruler of the world" Napoleon sought to conquer 
the world, and in the reaction to such militaristic 
domination, the Germany of today was born. Fichte 
struggled to place the rock of spiritual understand- 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 5 



ing beneath the feet of the nation, and the Tug end- 
bund or "League of Virtue" was formed; but broth- 
erhood was soon restricted to one's fellow country- 
men, and a German God supplanted the Universal 
God of Humanity. 

Kuhn acknowledges the perversion of German 
ambitions from the more spiritual ideals of Fichte, 
when he says, "History has made us Germans the 
inheritors of the Napoleonic idea." Treitschke tells 
us "The Bible distinctly says that the ruler shall rule 
by the sword," and "A nation's military efficiency 
is the exact coefficient of a nation's idealism." Bern- 
hardi makes the bold statement, deplorably true in 
practice but absolutely false in the idealistic sense in 
which it is used, that "There never was a religion 
which was more combative than Christianity." This 
may be true of the German brand of Christianity, 
but there are many people in the world who found 
their conception of Christianity on the teachings of 
Christ, and who worship the Universal God of 
Christ, the Heavenly Father of all men, and not a 
tribal or national god. 

Germany has abandoned Christianity for a pagan 
tribal god, and Odin, "the mad and raging one," has 
come back to his own ; Valhalla with its boastf ulness, 
banquets and brawls has displaced the heaven of 
peace and righteousness, and only German heroes, 
slain in physical combat, will be transported by the 
Valkyries to the life beyond. 

Prof. Cramb in Germany and England com- 
pletely changes the Christ spirit as expressed in the 
Beatitudes of The Sermon on the Mount, and in 
the New Imperative , gives to the world a definite 
expression of the real German spirit of barbaric mil- 
itarism: — "Ye have heard how in old times it was 



6 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



said, 'Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the 
earth,' but I say unto you, Blessed are the valiant, 
for they shall make the earth their throne. And ye 
have heard men say, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit ;' 
but I say unto you, Blessed are the great in soul 
and free in spirit, for they shall enter into Valhalla. 
And ye have heard men say, 'Blessed are the peace- 
makers;' but I say unto you, Blessed are the war- 
makers, for they shall be called, if not the children 
of the Judaic- Christian God, the children of Odin 
(the ancient German god of war) who is greater 
than the Judaic-Christian God." 

In the realm of religion, Prof. Cramb has proved 
as honest as Maximilian Harden in the field of poli- 
tics. Harden urged his countrymen to stop lying 
and admit that Germany deliberately planned and 
willed the war, and that for them the war was one 
of aggression and conquest. Prof. Cramb drops the 
hypocrisy of claiming Christian sanction for Prus- 
sian brutality, and among German religionists he 
stands as solitary a figure as does Harden in the 
field of politics. German militarists, professors and 
philosophers for decades have preached the doctrine 
of aggressive force, but when Germany expressed 
this doctrine by action, they all hypocritically and 
completely changed their front, and under Imperial 
direction, urged that the war — forced upon the 
world by the Hohenzollern and Hapsburg dynas- 
ties — was a justifiable war of defense. 

We are told by the Germans that "This war is a 
world ordeal arranged by God." Those who have 
read and compared the White, Blue, Red, Gray, 
Yellow and Orange books prepared by the govern- 
ments of the various belligerent nations, know that 
Germany and Austria forced this world-war upon 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 7 

peace-loving peoples. If God decreed this war, then 
the Teutons are assuredly His chosen people, for no 
other people could be found in the whole world 
wicked enough to undertake it. A people's concep- 
tion of God is an index of their culture and morality. 
The God of a people is a reflection of those qualities 
which the people value the most highly and consider 
the most potent. The German God, like Yahweh 
of Old, is an intolerant, exclusive tribal God of 
War, jealous and passionate, capricious and re- 
vengeful. There is truth in the bitter and ironical 
saying of Voltaire, "Since God created man in His 
own image, how often has man endeavored to render 
a similar service to God?" Luigi Luzzatti, protest- 
ing against the Teuton abuse of the name of God, 
has said, "Let us save God from such profanation! 
Let us leave in peace the Father of all mankind who 
punishes guilt and rewards virtue, and who gives no 
one the right to represent Him on earth and to claim 
for himself His omnipotence in this tragedy of 
war.'" 

Pastor Lehmann in On the German God says, 
"The German soul is the world's soul; God and Ger- 
many belong to one another. . . . The German 
soul is God's soul; it shall and will rule over man- 
kind. . . . Germany is the center of God's plans 
for the world," and again he says that Germans, the 
"ultimate purpose" of God, must defend "God 
against the world." Karl Engelbrecht tells us that 
God will help the Germans, "for He is German," and 
"there lurks in our people something of that God- 
consciousness which inspired the Old Testament 
prophets." 

The Kaiser, in his speech at Bremen on March 
22nd, 1905, proclaimed to his people, "We are the 



8 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



salt of the earth." And in Protest ant enhlatt (1915) 
we read, "If you ask me 'How shall I build up the 
Kingdom of God?' my answer is 'Be a good Ger- 
man.' . . . Seek to submerge yourself in German 
spirit, in German mind. Help as best you can 
toward our victory; help to make our fatherland 
grow and wax mighty." 

In one of a series of pamphlets published by the 
professors of Berlin University, we read these words 
by Prof. Deissmann, "The German God is not only 
the theme of some of our poets and prophets, but 
also a historian like Max Lenz has with fiery tongue 
and in deep thankfulness borne witness to the reve- 
lation of the German God in our Holy War. The 
German, the national God! . . . This (war) is 
no relapse to a lower level, but a mounting up to 
God Himself," and again he says, "In the age of 
the most tremendous mobilization of physical and 
spiritual forces the world has ever seen, we proclaim 
. — no, we do not proclaim it, but it reveals itself — 
the Religion of Strength." 

In this elective alliance with God, the Germans 
are purely selfish ; they are not actuated by any spirit 
of idealism beyond their own temporal benefit; 
Naumann, a member of the Reichstag, brazenly 
said that Germans "hold the alliance between Provi- 
dence and our people to be a matter of necessity." 
It was probably for the same reason that Germany, 
feeling that the German God would not be powerful 
enough to conquer the Triple Entente, made an alli- 
ance with the god of the Turkish Mohammedans. 
Francke in War Sermons says, "We fight them 
(the Allies) for Christianity as against degenera- 
tion and barbarism. . . . God must be with us 
and victory ours. This is guaranteed us by the truth 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 9 



of our nature, which is as German as it is Christian," 
but Dr. Huber wrote, "We look for the most valu- 
able aid from Pan-Islamism, from the living sense 
of solidarity between all Moslems of the whole world, 
dependent on their common religion. . . . If all 
accounts be true, the whole Moslem world is flocking 
round the Sultan-Kalif and regards this war as a 
'Holy War.' " Much that is said by Teutonic pas- 
tors of Christ could be more fittingly said of Mo- 
hammed, and what they please to term "Christian- 
ity" is a form of Islamism robbed of its spiritual 
nature. It is, therefore, amusing to read the follow- 
ing which emanated from Dr. Preuss, "The thief 
who expiated a sinful past by his repentance in the 
last hour and was outwardly subjected to the same 
suffering as our Lord, is the type of Turkish nation 
which now puts Christianity (outside of Germany) 
to shame." 

Wilhelm Miihlon wrote in his diary under date 
of September 1st, 1914, "Appeals to God and praise 
to Him never cease. There is no despatch or bulle- 
tin in which the Kaiser does not say : 'God has helped 
us. May He help us further. He will help us further, 
the Christian's God, the German God, the God of 
Battles, who never deserts the righteous (German) 
cause." And again on November 10th, 1914, "The 
Turkish Government, just like the rest of us, calls 
loudly in its proclamations and war bulletins on 
God, who recognizes the justice of the Turkish cause 
and protects that cause. The Turkish Government 
also describes itself as the attacked and persecuted 
party, forced to enter the war by implacable enemies 
of the Turkish Empire. This hypocritical croak- 
ing on the part of accomplices in crime must be a 



10 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



pleasing concert for the ears of the Ruler of the 
world." 

German nationalism is made superior to religion, 
and its demand upon the human soul greater than 
that of any other loyalty, no matter how real, hu- 
mane and essentially spirtual it may be. Germany 
mobilizes all organized religions as well as the inher- 
ent spiritual natures of her people for her own 
material, nationalistic ends ; thus the innate religious 
sense of a people is deadened, and this atrophy of 
the spirit is accompanied by an arrogant egoism — 
the antithesis of that universal loyalty which ema- 
nates from the soul of the world. Heinrich Leo has 
said, "The Celtic race has always been moved by an 
animal instinct, while we Germans only act under 
the influence of a holy and sacred thought." It is 
interesting to note that two millenniums ago Caesar 
distinguished the Gaul and Celt from the German 
in their basic conceptions of religion, and in the 
influence of religion upon their lives and thought. 
He noticed that the Germans put no trust in unseen 
gods or in the learned and spiritually-minded 
Druids, but worshipped "those alone whom they 
see and by whom they are benefited — the sun, fire 
and the moon," — a truly Teutonic characteristic. 

Valleius Paterculus (19 B. C.-31 A. D.), the 
Roman historian who served for eight years as Prae- 
fect of cavalry and Legatus in Germany, wrote, 
"The character of the Germans presents a terrible 
blend of ferocity and trickery; they are a people of 
born liars." What a stubborn, persistent thing type 
is ! Nineteen centuries have rolled by since Valleius 
Paterculus penned his description of the Germans, 
yet the picture is as pertinent today in the twenti- 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 11 



eth century as it was at the dawn of the Christian 
era. 

The "religion" of Germany has in reality thor- 
oughly repudiated Christ and the teachings of the 
New Testament. But Germany calls herself a 
"Christian" nation, and the German Emperor a 
Christian ecclesiastic, the head of the Protestant 
United Church of Prussia ; for, while Pan-German- 
ism professes to find justification for its ruthless na- 
tionalism in the Old Testament and in the ancient 
writings or Bible of Judaism, it cannot afford to 
openly and officially adopt an anti-Christ policy. 
The words of Christ and the teachings of the apos- 
tles are therefore perverted, profaned and mobilized 
in the interest of German nationalism ; Christ is pic- 
tured as the patron Saint of Germany ; and the Ger- 
man nation, with its cruel, pitiless heart and hands 
wallowing in human blood, is likened to the compas- 
sionate Christ. 

Hofpradikant Stipberger has said "A hard and 
steep via Cruris lies before the great benefactor and 
magnanimous liberator of the kultur-world, the Ger- 
man people. Although it looks beyond the gloom of 
Good Friday to the dawn of Easter Morn, beyond 
the dark days of war to the beacons of triumph — 
yet the Cross still rests on its shoulders, and the Gol- 
gotha of the hardest decision still awaits it." Teu- 
tonic "pastors" seem to particularly revel in that 
devilish hypocrisy that likens the German nation to 
Christ. Francke in War Sermons has said, "As 
Jesus was treated, so also have the German people 
been treated," and Munch goes still further and 
elaborates on this pernicious theme, — "Is not Ger- 
many itself transformed into a suffering Christ? 
We, too, have gone through our hour of trial on the 



12 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



Mount of Olives when, with our Kaiser, we prayed 
that the cup of suffering might pass from us; and 
we, too, obeying the unfathomable will of God, have 
begun to drain it. . . . We, too, were betrayed by 
those to whom we had shown nothing but justice 
and kindness ; and around us, too, resounded in ac- 
cents of hatred and envy, the cry of 4 Crucify 
Him!' " Many people in Germany, as in other 
lands, undoubtedly prayed during the last week in 
July, 1914, that the world might be saved from the 
horrors of war, but they most assuredly did not pray 
"with our Kaiser/' He and his ministers with "Ems 
Telegrams" were proving to the world that even 
Bismarck, the unscrupulous nationalist and the man 
of "blood and iron," who successfully willed and 
inaugurated the Franco-Prussian war by fraud and 
deliberate lies, was an amateur as compared with 
the present ruling power of Germany, in the pro- 
duction of false telegrams and forged, mutilated and 
fictitious official documents. 

Dr. Preuss, the German theologian, says, "Our 
people are experiencing a repetition of the Passion 
of Christ," and Pastor Rump in War Devotions 
writes, "A Jesus-less horde, a crowd of the Godless 
are in the field against us. . . . May God sur- 
round us with His protection . . . since our defeat 
would also mean the defeat of His Son in human- 
ity," and again, "We are fighting for the cause of 
Jesus within mankind." Pastor Erdmann in The 
Christianity of the Belligerent Nations says that 
"The German people, bearing forward in victory 
the Evangel of the Cross of Christ, is the great 
Christophorus in the world of nations." William 
Archer, commenting on this assertion, remarked 
that the particular injunction of the Evangel of 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 13 



Christ which inspired the sinking of the Lusitania 
was no doubt "suffer little children to come unto 
me." And we might fittingly ask if the Zeppelins 
and Gothas, which bombed unprotected homes and 
schools and atrociously murdered seven hundred 
and fifty-seven innocent English children and three 
hundred and forty-two women, — up to the end of 
March, 1918 — carried forward on their diabolical 
flight of death the "Evangel of the Cross of 
Christ ?" 

Dr. Deissmann, Professor of New Testament 
Exegesis at Berlin, and a man who has obtained 
honorable degrees at Aberdeen, St. Andrews and 
Manchester, well illustrates how the subtle Pan- 
German poison has completely deadened the finer 
discriminating, rational faculties of even the most 
worthy Teuton citizens: — "Christianity is possessed 
of potent spiritual energies, since it inspires our 
minds, not only with patience, but also with digni- 
fied pride. 'Blessed are ye when men shall reproach 
you and persecute you and say all manner of evil 
against you falsely for my sake !' I quite understand 
Friedrich Naumann's declaration that this text has 
meant much to him in these days." 

As an illustration of the complete obsession of a 
supposedly discriminating, rational, human mind 
by a pernicious nationalism, we cannot do better 
than refer to letters written in September, 1914, by 
Adolf Lasson, Professor of Philosophy in the Uni- 
versity of Berlin, in which he says, "We are morally 
and intellectually superior to all — without peers. 
It is the same with our organizations and with our 
institutions. . . . We are truthful, our character- 
istics are humanity, gentleness, conscientiousness — 
the virtues of Christ, In a world of wickedness we 



14 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



represent love, and God is with us" Pastor Leh- 
mann in Von Deutschen Gott (1915) said, "The 
German nation leads in the domains of kultur, sci- 
ence, intelligence, morality, art and religion, and 
in the entire domain of the inner life. . . . The 
world shall ... be healed by the German spirit. 
. . . Germany is the leader in the entire domain of 
intellect, character and soul. . . . This war is a 
war of envy and jealousy of Germany's leadership. 
It is a fight of hounds against a noble quarry." Dr. 
Paul Conrad, Pastor of the Kaiser Wilhelm Me- 
morial Church in Berlin, in Stark in dem Herrn 
(1915), said, "We Germans feel ourselves to be 
the bearers of a superior kultur. We have no doubt 
that a defeat of our people would retard, by many 
centuries, the development of mankind. On the 
other hand, we hope, by the victory of our arms, to 
bring about a new efflorescence of humanity through 
the German nature, which will prove itself fruitful 
of blessings to other peoples." The same general 
thought is taught in German schools and universi- 
ties, by the "authoritative" press, and is preached 
from the pulpits. Pastor Francke merely ex- 
pressed the prevailing Teutonic sentiment decreed 
by the Prussian dynasty when he said, "Germany 
is precisely the representative of the highest moral- 
ity, of the purest humanity, of the most chastened 
Christianity." Such egoism could only consort 
with wickedness. 

The Germans calling themselves, in their colos- 
sal self-glorification, "Children of the future," have 
gravitated back to a morality below that of the 
Stone Age, and made their warfare of lust the more 
hideous through the devices of modern science. 
Goethe (1749-1832) wrote, "Germans are of yes- 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 15 



terday — a few centuries must still elapse before it 
will be said of them 'It is long since they were bar- 
barians.' National hatred is a peculiar thing, you 
will always find it strongest and most violent where 
there is the lowest degree of culture," and again, 
"The Prussians are cruel by nature; civilization 
will make them ferocious." Schiller, the cosmopoli- 
tan Professor of History at Jena, is another of 
those "damned literary fellows" who in their day 
were denounced by the Hohenzollerns and their 
subsidized Intellectuals. In 1789, he said that a 
man who wrote exclusively for one people or one 
nation — as demanded by the dynasty — had a low 
aim and was unworthy of his calling. "A philo- 
sophic spirit cannot tolerate such limits, cannot 
bound its views to a form of nature so arbitrary, so 
fluctuating and so accidental." Schopenhauer, one 
of the greatest of German philosophers, and one 
who refused to sell his soul to the Prussian dynastic 
interests, said, just before he died in 1860, "In an- 
ticipation of death, I make this confession, that I 
despise the German nation on account of its infinite 
stupidity, and that I blush to belong to it." Ignor- 
ance and vice, stupidity and crime generally go to- 
gether, and Prussian "sabre rattlers" are no ex- 
ception to the rule. 

Among the first recorded words of Nietzsche 
(1844-1900) are those uttered in his Bale lectures 
in 1873, in criticism of German educational insti- 
tutions. He asked if education, the great civilizing 
force in the world, was to be the servant of human- 
ity or merely a German-state instrument? It 
should be the former, but he affirmed that it was the 
latter, for the Prus so- German system compelled it 
"to renounce its highest and most independent 



16 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



claims in order to subordinate itself to the service of 
the state." Nietzsche compared the dissemination 
of hultur under the Prussianized and Bismarckian 
German-state to a reeling, torch-lit and self-ab- 
sorbed procession of worshippers, intoxicated by 
the mysteries of some pagan cult. "The state as- 
sumes the attitude of a mystagogue of kultur, and, 
while it promotes its own ends, it obliges every one 
of its servants not to appear in its presence without 
the torch of universal state education in his hands, 
by the flickering light of which he may recognize the 
state as the highest goal, as the reward of all his 
striving after education;" and again, "This purpose 
of state is at war with the real German spirit and 
the education derived therefrom . . . with that 
spirit which speaks to us so wondrously from the 
inner heart of the German reformation, German 
music and German philosophy, and which, like a 
noble exile, is regarded with such indifference and 
scorn by the much-vaunted education afforded by 
the state." 

Almost the last words of Nietzsche were, like the 
first, devoted to this same general theme. "Not 
only have the Germans entirely lost the breadth of 
vision which enables one to grasp the course of cul- 
ture and the values of culture; not only are they 
one and all political puppets, but they have actually 
put a ban upon this very breadth of vision. A man 
must first and foremost be 'German,' he must be- 
long to 'the race;' then only can he pass judgment 
upon all values and lack of values in history; then 
only can he establish them. To be German is in 
itself an argument; Deutschland iiber alles is a 
principle; the Germans stand for 'the moral order 
of the universe' in history. Compared with the Ho- 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 17 



man Empire, they are upholders of freedom; com- 
pared with the eighteenth century, they are restor- 
ers of morality, of the categorical imperative. 
There is such a thing as the writing of history ac- 
cording to the lights of Imperial Germany. . . . 
There is also history written with an eye to the 
court, and Herr von Treitschke is not ashamed of 
himself." 

Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) said of his people, 
"Nature has made them (the Prussians) stupid; 
science has made them wicked." Concerning the 
progressive atrophy of intellect and conscience, 
Heine said, "Luther shook Germany to its founda- 
tions, but Francis Drake pacified Germany's intel- 
lect by giving us the potato, and a Miinchen brewer 
pacified our conscience by giving us beer." Sar- 
casm can go no further. Some time ago Kaiser 
Wilhelm II boasted that his army had already de- 
stroyed seventy - three Gothic cathedrals and 
churches. Sixty years before this war began, Heine 
foretold most of its crimes, for he knew that bitter 
springs of hatred and cruelty must give forth pois- 
oned waters of death. He wrote in regard to archi- 
tecture that by some queer, unexplainable chance, 
Gothic builders erected the magnificent Cathedral of 
Cologne on the edge of Germany. "What a calam- 
ity ! It is only a question of time when the old sav- 
age German impulses will assert themselves and 
the Germans will turn that cathedral into a heap of 
ruins." 

Rheims Cathedral has been repeatedly and de- 
liberately shelled by the Germans on the false ex- 
cuse that there was an observation post on the 
tower. Other cathedrals, churches and magnificent 
edifices have been wantonly destroyed, including the 



18 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



University Library at Louvain, with its archives 
and collections of unpublished manuscripts. None 
of these splendid structures were used for military 
purposes, but their destruction is universally ap- 
proved in Germany; Major General von Disfurth 
expressed the prevailing German thought and ex- 
cuse when, after a few months of war, he said, 
"The meanest grave of one of our soldiers" (wan- 
tonly attacking the homeland of a foreign people) 
"is more venerable than all the cathedrals and all 
the art treasures of the world." 

Gen. von Disfurth quite completely expressed the 
doctrine of the hideous and morally repellent Prus- 
sian Religion of War and the horrors of the Prusso- 
German "philosophy" of Brute Power and I minor - 
alism, when in the Hamburger Nachrichten he said, 
"No object whatever is served by taking any notice 
of the accusations of barbarity leveled against Ger- 
many by our foreign critics. Frankly, we are and 
must be barbarians, if by this we understand those 
who wage war relentlessly and to the uttermost de- 
gree. . . . We owe no explanation to any one. 
There is nothing for us to justify and nothing to 
explain away. Every act of whatever nature com- 
mitted by our troops for the purpose of discourag- 
ing, defeating and destroying our enemies is a 
brave act and a good deed, and is fully justified. 
. . . Germany stands as the supreme arbiter of 
her own methods, which in the time of war must be 
dictated to the world. . . . They call us barbar- 
ians. What of it? We scorn them and their abuse. 
For my part I hope that in the war we have merited 
the title of barbarians. Let neutral peoples and 
our enemies cease their empty chatter, which may 
well be compared to the twitter of birds. Let them 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 19 



cease their talk of the Cathedral of Rheims, and of 
all the churches, and all the castles in France which 
have shared its fate. These things do not interest 
us. Our troops must achieve victory. What else 
matters?" 

Prof. Wilhelm Kahl of Berlin in Deutsche Reden 
in Schwerer Zeit says, "When German soldiers had 
to seize the incendiary torch or proceed to the slaugh- 
ter of citizens, it was only in pursuance of the rights 
of war and for protection in need." Yet Kahl with 
nationalistic self -righteousness and with pride and 
fervor remarks, "We thank our German army that 
it has kept spotless the shield of humanity and chiv- 
alry/' but with true Prussian inconsistency he sig- 
nificantly adds, "It is true we believe that every 
bone of a German soldier, with his heroic heart and 
immortal soul, is worth more than a cathedral," and 
he implies, "or any foreign thing." It is the Ger- 
man belief that human obligations, if any, apply 
only to one's own — Teutonic — countrymen. The 
world-famous scientist, Prof. Ernst Haeckel of 
J ena, has the audacity in Ewigkeit Weltkriegsge- 
danken (1915) to say, "One single highly cultured 
German warrior, of those who are, alas! falling in 
thousands, represents a higher intellectual and 
moral life-value than hundreds of the raw children 
of nature whom Britain and France, Russia and 
Italy, oppose to them." All the product of state- 
controlled German schools, with their compulsory 
education under the direction of the militaristic and 
"divine right" dynasty are, of course, "highly cul- 
tured," and all foreigners are "raw children of na- 
ture" (naturmenschen) no matter what their in- 
herent wisdom, developed character or mind and 
soul-culture may be. 



20 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



The "religious" ideal in Germany with regard 
to atrocities is as devilishly pernicious as the so- 
called "philosophical" ideal. Pastor Traub says. 
"Our troops . . . recognize . . . that the 
truest compassion lies in taking the sternest 
measures;" and Pastor Baumgarten, the champion 
"spiritual" defender of the Lusitania outrage, says, 
"We are . . . compelled to carry on this war 
with a cruelty, a ruthlessness, and the employment 
of every imaginable device and measure unknown 
in any previous war." 

Dr. W. Fuchs, a literary physician of Germany, 
says that the "Holiest raptures of homage" of the 
German people "are paid to Titans of the Blood- 
deed." Fuchs speaks disparagingly of the value to 
Germany of geniuses such as Goethe, Schiller and 
Wagner, and says that Germans "cherish with the 
most ardent love" men like Barbarossa, the great 
Frederick, Bliicher and Bismarck, "the hard men 
of blood;' it is to the men who sacrificed and 
slaughtered the thousands and hundreds of thou- 
sands of human beings "that the soul of the 
German people goes out with tenderest affection 
and positively adoring gratitude." Again he says, 
that the thing most needed in Germany today is 
"Education to hate. Education to the estimation 
of hatred. Organization of hatred. Education to 
the desire for hatred. Let us abolish unripe and 
false shame before brutality and fanaticism. We 
must not hesitate to announce : 'To us is given faith, 
hope and hatred, but hatred is the greatest among 
them.' " 

Barbarian kultur that cannot appreciate the 
demands of humanity, cannot be expected to revere 
the glorious monuments of man's art and the prod- 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 21 



uct of his inspiration. That which Germans are 
not in sympathy with, they cannot enjoy; that 
which Prussianism did not produce, is of no im- 
portance and should be destroyed. The psycho- 
logical attitude is essentially barbaric; it is a com- 
bination of extreme tribal egoism with a subtle, 
unacknowledged feeling of angry resentment and 
"sour grapes." It is interesting, at this time, to 
recall the great Heine's prophecy concerning 
Russia. "The time will come when Russia will 
lean upon Germany — will lean with her hand on 
the club with which her brains have been beaten 
out." 

That unadulterated Prussianism exists in all its 
hideousness among the officers of the German army 
is well illustrated by the remarks of a captured 
Prussian officer, reported by the British under date 
of July 1st, 1917. This officer maintained that in 
Germany the aristocracy governed the masses 
(whom he termed "the fools"), whereas in Britain, 
France, America and democratic lands, the masses 
("the fools") governed the aristocracy, i. e., the 
born leaders and nobility. He affirmed that the 
talk in Germany about "the guilt of beginning the 
war" was for the German masses. "The published 
official statements are for German fools." The 
nobility, leaders and the army officers of Germany 
do not talk of guilt ; "It was a glory and I claim it 
for Germany . . . The Prussian purpose is 
God. There is no other. Prussia will rend the veil 
of the temple, but she will destroy to create. 
Against Prussian might the world as it exists 
today will fall in ruins, but Prussia will build a 
better and more virile world in its place. Strength 
only will survive. The life of man is naturally a 



22 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



fight. The strongest in force and cunning will live 
. . . The old virtue was womanish; the new 
virtue is strength . . . Life is war — all of life 
that is healthy. Peace is only striving for mastery 
with immoral weapons. That is the law of nature. 
. . . The weakest must go under. They are 
the disease. The stronger will live; and after that 
the stronger and stronger until there is perfect 
health . . . Those who do not care to fight in 
order that they may rule, are by their nature slaves, 
and they will be enslaved." 

In regard to the dynastically-controlled military 
system of Prussia, with its Junker officers and the 
serfdom of the people through "authoritative" 
education, press and pulpits, Heine wrote in 
scornful disgust, "The German is a slave who obeys 
his Kaiser without chains or lash — yea, even at a 
sign from his lord he falls upon his knees. For the 
terrible thing about the German's slavery is that 
it is his soul that is enslaved. The Germans wear 
spiritual chains forged by their lord and master, 
while black men wear only iron chains . . . 
The servility of the men of Berlin is in their souls 
. . . The Germans have no self-respect. They 
are the only men in the world who, as private 
soldiers, will stand still while an officer kicks them 
or bespatters them with mud. They receive the 
mud with smiles and stand expectantly, hat in 
hand." Contrast this picture with the words of the 
Brunswick (German) soldier who had been fight- 
ing for the mad German King, George III of 
England, against the colonists in America, 
"America is a fine, free country, it is worth fighting 
for; I know the difference by knowing my own; 
in my country, if the King says 'eat straw,' we eat 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 23 



straw." Thomas Paine, who recorded this observa- 
tion, remarked, "Government with insolence is 
despotism, but when contempt is added it becomes 
worse; and to pay for contempt (i. e., support the 
King, pay his bills and keep him on his throne) is 
the excess of slavery . . . God help that 
country . . . whose liberties are to be pro- 
tected by German principles of government." 

Baron Stein (1757-1831), called the feudal land- 
lords of Prussia — the Junkers — "heartless, 
wooden, half -educated people, fit only to be turned 
into corporals or calculating machines," but for all 
that, these men were the very backbone of the 
traditional Prussian monarchy. Bismarck, him- 
self a Brandenburg Junker, knew his fellow-Prus- 
sians well, and both classes, nobles and peasants, 
responded to his methods with the historic energy 
of Prussia under discipline. Bismarck once ob- 
served that the real Prussian "goes to meet certain 
death in the service with the simple words, 'At your 
orders,' but if he has to act on his own responsi- 
bility, dreads the criticism of his superior officer or 
of the world more than death, even to the extent 
of allowing his energy and correct judgment to be 
impaired by the fear of blame and reproof." The 
Prussian enjoys having some one else think for 
him and outline his actions, hence we see in Ger- 
many a form of official government, revolting to 
free men and all individuals who by nature feel and 
desire to enjoy some independence of thought and 
action. 

The self -adoration and infallibility of the Ger- 
man people, coupled with ambition, ferocity and 
hate, stand unequaled in the history of the world. 
Under a dominating dynasty of absolutism, which 



24 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



military success has created and developed, Ger- 
man patriotism has degenerated to a Pan-Ger- 
manism which is a debased, intolerant and restric- 
tive nationalism with world-wide ambitions, and 
the belief that the German people is a peculiar race, 
chosen by God, who has definitely associated Him- 
self with the German people to the exclusion of all 
other peoples. The belief is analogous to that of 
the old Arabian nomads of the desert — the primi- 
tive tribes of Israel ; but only the earliest, unspiri- 
tual Yahwehism of tradition and the crude thoughts 
of a barbarous people have anything in common 
with Germanism. The ethical prophets of Judaism, 
upon whose inspired words the real religion of 
the Jews is based, vigorously denounced all those 
crude beliefs which form the foundation of the 
arrogant, tribal egoism and hateful intolerance of 
Teutonism. The "religion" of Germany is that 
of national advantage; in it there is no place for 
the spiritual, the idealistic or the philosophical. 
It has been said that Germany's depravity must 
be attributed to its repudiation of religion and the 
substitution of philosophy. This cannot be, for re- 
ligion is man's relation to his God, and philosophy 
is the search after truth; God is truth, and the 
mind that searches for truth seeks God. 

The philosophers of Germany, like the philoso- 
phers of other countries, have always been essential- 
ly spiritual men, free from dwarfing and enslaving 
dogmatic beliefs, and possessing appetency for 
Cosmic truth. But Germany has repudiated her 
spiritual philosophers and adopted in her creed 
of nationalistic religion, not the truth as revealed 
by her greatest sons, but the opinions of her subsi- 
dized scholars, who, preferring honors and mate- 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 25 



rial success to bitter persecution and exile, have sold 
their souls to the dynasty. 

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the Scotch- 
German philosopher of Konigsberg, whose book 
on Perpetual Peace is a classic, was humiliated by 
the Prussian King, and his philosophy has been 
bitterly and persistently condemned by the High 
Priests of Prussian militarism. Prof. Sombart has 
said, "We have no knowledge of pacifist utterances 
of representative Germans at any time. The 
wretched book of the aged Kant on Perpetual 
Peace ... is the only inglorious exception. 
Such utterances would indeed amount to a sin 
against the holy spirit of Germanism, which, from 
the depths of its heroism, cannot possibly arrive at 
any other view than a high appreciation of war." 
This well expresses the prevailing Teutonic estima- 
tion of the great world-philosopher. Prince von 
Moltke said, "Eternal peace is only a dream and 
not even a beautiful dream" and Dr. Friedrich 
Lange, in Pure Germanism, adds the real modern, 
Teutonic touch when he says, "No, certainly not 
beautiful, for a peace which could no longer look for- 
ward to war . . . would poison and rot away our 
inmost heart until we became loathsome to our- 
selves." Kant, who has influenced the thinkers 
of all lands, clashed fiercely with Frederick Wil- 
lie lm II, King of Prussia. After the first half 
of his book on Religion Within the Limits of 
Reason Alone had been published in Berlin, the 
printing of the second half was prohibited by the 
Government. Kant succeeded later in having the 
entire work published in Konigsberg; for this he 
was forbidden to write or lecture on any religious 



26 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



subject, and for years the expression of his thought 
was handicapped by German despotism. 

In his work on Perpetual Peace, the philoso- 
pher's first definitive article, covering the essentials 
which must be realized before permanent interna- 
tional peace can be obtained, — reads, "The civil 
Constitution of each state shall be republican;" 
his second is, "The law of nations shall be founded 
on a federation of free states," and his third, "The 
rights of men, as citizens of the world, shall be 
limited to the conditions of universal hospitality." 
Kant denounced in vigorous terms all treaties that 
merely afforded a temporary suspension of hostil- 
ities and all that could be considered by any 
participant as a mere "scrap of paper;" he stood 
unflinchingly for the protection of weak states, for 
the abolition of large standing armies and con- 
traction of national debts in connection with 
foreign affairs ; he maintained that no state has the 
right to violently interfere with the Constitution 
of another, and he denounced international treach- 
ery, dishonest and secret diplomacy, spying, assas- 
sination and unscrupulous strategems in the affairs 
of nations. In substance, Kant denounced Prusso- 
German methods and Prusso- German ideals thor- 
oughly and completely. 

With these facts in mind, and knowing that 
Kant represented the very antithesis of all that 
the Hohenzollern dynasty, Pan-Germanism and 
militarism stand for today, the following hypo- 
critical statement of Wilhelm II, recently trans- 
mitted to the East Prussian Diet, is significant 
of the Machiavellianism of the German Emperor 
in relation to his own people: "The province of 
East Prussia is especially dear to my heart." (He 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 27 



permitted it to be overrun by the Russians early 
in the war and deliberately sacrificed the people 
"dear to his heart" on the altar of his egoistic 
vanity — for he must enter Paris before the end 
of September, 1914). "In this war it has made 
great sacrifices, and, therefore, it will gladly 
acknowledge the hand of God as now shown in 
the East" (the internal disruption of Russia with 
anarchy rampant). "We owe our victory largely 
to the moral and spiritual treasures which the 
great philosopher of Konigsberg (Kant) be- 
stowed upon our people" What contemptible 
sacrilege to liken the spiritual and pacifistic teach- 
ings of Kant to the diabolical treachery of the 
Germans in Russia! The chaotic internal condi- 
tions and the Reign of Terrorism in Russia, 
primarily caused by German treachery and Bol- 
sheviki disloyalty and gullibility, are described by 
Kaiser Wilhelm in a message to the Vice President 
of the Reichstag as "one of those greatest moments 
in which we (Germans) can reverently admire 
God's hand in history;" and he adds, "The German 
sword is our best protection," after having disinte- 
grated Russia by false hopes and promises, by 
the spreading of the gospel of "no annexation; 
no indemnity," only to repudiate it when he had 
succeeded in starting the Russian revolution and 
dividing the people among themselves. 



II. 



Atavistic Kultur 

f | ^HE tyranny of Prussianism is perhaps best 
exemplified by the cruel treatment Germany 
has accorded her sons of genius, most of 
whom have suffered exile. Hoffmann ( 1798-1874 ) , 
the writer of the famous war song Deutschland 
iiher Alles, which modern Germans sing as they 
march into battle, was dismissed from a Professor- 
ship at Breslau, and branded a "degenerate son of 
the fatherland." For six years this loyal German 
patriot was hunted from one German state to 
another, because he had published a volume of 
songs which were not altogether pleasing to the 
Prussian dynasty. Ludwig Jahn (1778-1852), 
one of the most notable of German patriots during 
the Napoleonic period, founded in 1811 the Turn- 
verein, or Athletic Association. During the period 
of political reaction following the successful out- 
come of the Prussian Wars of Liberation, every 
popular, democratic and voluntary organization 
came under the ban of the Hohenzollerns ; and 
Jahn was arrested in 1819, subjected to humilia- 
tion, and kept in prison for six years, on the 
grounds of being a dangerous democrat, because 
he had sought to benefit his people by the develop- 
ment of their physical bodies, and instil in their 
minds through competitive athletics, that spirit of 
chivalry which has tended to make the Anglo- 
Saxon peoples so great. Ernst Moritz Arndt 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 29 



(1769-1860) was a co-worker with the famous 
Fichte and, like him, a pattern of true patriotism. 
He held the chair of history at Bonn University 
and was the author of much inspiring verse and 
song written in the cause of freedom, when Prussia 
was being humiliated in the struggle with Napo- 
leon. Arndt was arrested by order of the Crown 
in 1820 because of his democratic views; he was 
forbidden to write or lecture, and was deprived of 
his professorship. 

Karl Gutzkow (1811-1878), the brilliant Ger- 
man author, was held by the Hohenzollerns and 
their satellites to have "too liberal ideas." In 1835 
his works were banned and he himself ignomin- 
iously thrown into prison. Fritz Renter (1810- 
1874), one of Germany's greatest literary geniuses 
of the nineteenth century, was even sentenced to 
death because of his democratic views and for his 
activities in the German Students' Association. 
The indignation of the people, however, was so 
intense and so freely expressed, that the sentence 
was commuted to thirty years' imprisonment; but 
after seven years in jail, he was restored to freedom. 

Borne, Laube, Freiligrath and Herwegh were 
the most gifted of many liberal or democratic 
Germans, who, during the political struggle of the 
people against the dynasty in the period of 1815- 
1848, had to endure exile and the banning in 
Germany of all their writings. In 1848 Rich- 
ard Wagner, because of his democratic beliefs, 
had to flee the country. Heinrich Heine after 
championing the cause of democracy and "Young 
Germany," had to leave his native land in 1831, 
and spend the remainder of his life in Paris. Kant, 
Fichte and many other brilliant North Germans 



30 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



resided among their countrymen for years in a 
condition of virtual mental imprisonment, resem- 
bling the church's incarceration of Galileo Galilei 
(1594) at his Villa in Italy, under the supervision 
of the Inquisition. In this connection it is interest- 
ing to recall the similarity of Hohenzollern (Prus- 
sian) and Hapsburg (Austrian) methods of com- 
batting democracy. The Viennese police under the 
regime of Metternich (1773-1859), once distin- 
guished themselves in phenomenal stupidity by their 
frenzied anti-democratic zeal, when they confiscated 
a new edition of Copernicus, because the title of his 
work — which was on Astronomy and not on polit- 
ical matters — began with the words Cf De Revolu- 
tionibus/' — the movement of the heavenly bodies 
being the "revolutions" referred to. 

Conditions in Teutonia under Prussian despot- 
ism have changed only in degree — and then only 
under compulsion, — but not in substance, since the 
days of tyranny following the Wars of Liberation. 
Hauptmann, Germany's greatest living poet, was 
brutally reproached by the Crown Prince Wilhelm 
in 1913, and branded as "a degenerate son of the 
fatherland." Hauptmann had been commissioned 
to write a commemorative drama or Festspiel, to 
be performed at Breslau on the centenary of the 
battle of Leipzig — Napoleon's first overthrow. 
The play as produced dealt with the popular upris- 
ing of 1813 following Napoleon's retreat from 
Moscow, but as it apparently emphasized the peo- 
ples' thoughts, aspirations and acts, and did not 
sufficiently extol the Hohenzollerns and the Prus- 
sian Princes and Generals, the Crown Prince 
demanded that it be withdrawn as a democratic, 
and, therefore, pernicious and unpatriotic play. 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 31 



Even Nietzsche hated his country and railed 
at her from over the Swiss border. Schopenhauer 
ridiculed her, but there has been no lack of scholars 
who could be bought, and the old depraved teaching 
of Machiavelli, coupled with the "philosophy" of 
Hegel and Max S timer, prepared the ground for 
the more modern exponents of kultur, the leitmotif 
of whose doctrine is Glorification of Violent 
Passion. 

Hegel (1770-1831) was a champion of war. He 
would have nothing to do with Kant's idea of a 
federation of nations formed in the interests of 
peace. The welfare of a state, he held, is its own 
highest law; and he refused to believe that this 
welfare was to be sought in an international peace. 
Hegel was contaminated with Napoleonism; he 
lived in an age when all power and order seemed 
to lie with the sword, and he became an ardent 
Prussian opportunist. Like Moltke, Hegel pro- 
fessed to see in war an educative instrument which 
developed virtues in nations and made the sep- 
arate interests cohesive and conscious of the benefits 
and obligations of citizenship. War, he maintained, 
left a nation always stronger than it was before, 
buried deep the causes of internal dissension and 
consolidated the internal power of the state. 
Hegel's panegyric of the state as "an absolutely 
complete, ethical organism, the be-all and the end- 
all of every one's education" gradually predomi- 
nated over the struggling, German, democratic 
spirit, and finally became the cornerstone of Ger- 
man belief and kultur, when Bismarck, in the inter- 
ests of the Hohenzollerns, effectively throttled indi- 
vidual liberty in Prussia. 

The predominating Teutonic "ideals" respon- 



32 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



sible for German self -laudation and contempt for 
the rest of the world, are found in the Trinity of 
German worship: super-king, super-state and 
super-race. It has been said that the major 
prophets of this German spirit of unrestrained 
and unashamed arrogance and exclusiveness, are 
<£ Treitschke, the prophet of tribalism, Nietzsche 
of ruthlessness, and Bernhardi of ambition." But 
Machiavelli, Hegel and Stirner sowed the seed 
of the rank weed of German "immoralism" which 
seems to have killed the religious, ethical and hu- 
mane spirit of the land. 

Max Stirner, the German philosopher of arro- 
gant egoism (1806-1856; real name K as par 
Schmidt), wrote "What does right matter to me? 
I have no need of it. What I can acquire by 
force, that I possess and enjoy; what I cannot 
obtain I renounce, and I set up no pretensions to 
indefeasible right. I have the right to do what 
I have the power to do." More recently Bern- 
hardi has vigorously championed the Prussian 
doctrine that "Might is Right," for in Germany 
and the Next War (1912) we read, "Might is the 
supreme right, and the dispute as to what is right 
is decided by the arbitrament of war. War gives 
a biologically just decision. . . . The law of 
the strong holds good everywhere. . . . Right 
is rejected so far only as it is compatible witli 
advantage." Adolf Grabowsky, a modern Ger- 
man writer on political subjects, has said, "The 
will to world-power has no limit." Germany will 
take all that she has the physical, i. e., militaristic, 
power to take, and will hold all that she has the 
physical power to hold. Every increase of power 
is an increased menace to the peace-loving world. 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 33 



Right does not enter into the consideration. Ger- 
man "immoralism" deifies brute force, and urges 
an unlimited ambition with no restriction on 
avarice and lust; there can, therefore, be no re- 
straint placed on that cruel, Satanic brute power 
which seeks to acquire at the expense of the physi- 
cally weaker, the more ethical, the more human and 
the more spiritual. 

Dr. Carl Peters, one of the founders of the Pan- 
German League, recently said, "Not to live and let 
live, but to live and direct the lives of others, that 
is power," and after this definition of power, which 
is despotic, dynastic and positively anti-democratic, 
he refers to "refined power" as that which pro- 
duces the subjugation of nations and peoples — pro- 
vided, of course, that Germany is the conqueror. 
Power, according to Peters, is physical or brute 
power, and when actuated by avarice on the part of 
the leaders and expressed by stupid ignorance on 
the part of the masses, is "refined power," and the 
expression of the divine will, provided that it be 
victoriously exercised by God's exclusive and only 
enlightened race — the Germans. 

The Bernhardi-Reventlow-Keim cult of modern 
Pan- Germanism, under the militant patronage of 
the Crown Prince, has spread its malignant poison 
throughout the length and breadth of Germany. It 
is not based merely on the policy of the Prussian 
militant triumvirate of Bismarck, Moltke and Roon, 
which founded the Prussian-dominated German 
Empire, but it goes far back to the military and un- 
scrupulous, grasping Hohenzollerns of the Mark 
of Brandenburg, whose policy, expressed in the per- 
son of Frederick II (the Great), made the arro- 
gant, lustful kingdom of Prussia a European men- 



34 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



ace. Mirabeau expressed the opinion of his century 
when he said, "War is Prussia's national industry." 

Bernhardi (born 1849) is a General of Cavalry, 
and has been a Departmental Chief of the General 
Staff; Keim (born 1845) is also a German Gen- 
eral, and Reventlow (born 1869) is a writer on 
military and naval matters, and is very close to 
Grand Admiral von Tirpitz. This trio give definite 
expression to the yearnings and aspirations of the 
military and Pan-Germanists of Teutonia, and 
their thoughts, arguments and general beliefs are 
founded upon Prussian military tradition and Na- 
poleonism, — the Corsican upstart himself being 
indebted to Germans, such as Frederick the Great, 
and Attila the Hun, for most of his basic ideas of 
conquest and European domination. 

Within the last few decades Germany has devel- 
oped what is virtually a religion of war. The Intel- 
lectuals have built a "philosophy" to explain it, and 
the militarists have clearly stated in a practical, 
understandable way what it stands for, and what it 
aspires to attain. The prophet of the plain-spoken 
Bernhardi-Reventlow-Keim cult was Karl von 
Clausewitz (1780-1831), the Prussian General and 
military writer; he was the pupil of Scharnhorst, 
fought against Napoleon, was captured at Jena in 
1806 and held as a prisoner of war for two years. 
Clausewitz was a true Prussian and regarded Na- 
poleonic methods as the basis, not merely of suc- 
cessful war, but of all sound statesmanship. To 
Clausewitz, war was merely "a continuation of pol- 
icy" to be invoked whenever expedient, and this 
absolutely without regard to honor, justice, moral 
right or legitimate cause. To covet and abstain 
from acquiring, when one has physical power to 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 35 



take, was in the affairs of nations, not virtue, but 
contemptible weakness. 

The militant and Machiavellian methods by 
which the Prussian power was developed and Ger- 
man union achieved between 1864 and 1871, coupled 
with the unprecedented prosperity enjoyed by the 
nation since that time, have caused many modern 
Germans to believe in the ancient Prussian and 
Napoleonic principles of physical force and treach- 
ery, and to establish the readily understandable 
"wisdom" of Clausewitz, the Prussian soldier, above 
all other wisdoms. Under Hohenzollern direction, 
the Prussian-Napoleonic-Clausewitz idea has been 
once more thoroughly Prussianized and national- 
ized; it has been developed and fortified by histor- 
ical, scientific and pseudo-philosophical arguments, 
and the entire intellectual life of Germany has been 
impregnated with its teachings. An investigator 
has found that during recent years an annual aver- 
age of seven hundred books, dealing with war, have 
been published in Germany. While the Anglo-Saxon 
and Latin peoples have been working toward peace 
and international arbitration, Germany has been 
teaching the religion of war and physical force, and 
the thoughts and aspirations of the people, under 
the direction of the dynasty, have been turned 
toward a world-conquest through military power. 

The effect of the devilish Prussian-militaristic 
teachings has told decisively upon the masses of the 
German nation, and there has been growing a strong 
popular approval of the doctrine that if neighbor- 
nations do not peaceably admit the paramountcy 
of Germany in Europe, they must be compelled to 
do so by force. How much this pernicious and es- 
sentially dynastic, Hohenzollern doctrine has spread 



36 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



of late years may be gathered from Prof. Otfried 
Nippold's Der Deutsche Chauvinismus (1913): 
"Hand in hand with outspoken hostility to foreign 
countries are enjoined a one-sided exaltation of 
war and a war mania . . . there is much irre- 
sponsible agitation against other states . . . and 
much frivolous incitement to war. . . . War is 
pictured, not as a possibility that may occur, but as 
a necessity that must come, and the sooner the bet- 
ter. The quintessence of the teachings of the organ- 
izations of Prusso-German Chauvinism ... is 
always the same ; — A European war is not merely 
an eventuality for which we must prepare, but a 
necessity for which we should, in the interest of the 
German nation, rejoice. From this dogma it is only 
a step to the next maxim, which is so dear to the 
hearts of the belligerent, political generals — the 
maxim of . . . so-called preventive war. If war 
has to come (and it must positively come) , then let 
it come at the moment most favorable to us. In 
other words, do not let us wait until a formal cause 
for war occurs, but let us strike when it best suits 
us, and above all let us strike soon." 

The name of Nietzsche (1844-1900) is so closely 
associated with the aggressive Prusso-German spirit 
of brutal force, that the present war has even been 
termed "The Euro-Nietzschean War." Nietzsche 
was a wild, unbalanced seer, who went mad in 1888. 
He was an extremist, but the totality of his teach- 
ings was not the Machiavellian-Prussianism as ex- 
pressed today by the Hohenzollern-driven Germans. 
Nietzsche was a passionate and unsparing critic of 
the Prusso- Germans, and he denounced the kultur 
of modern Germany as the arch-enemy of a new 
aristocracy which he foreshadowed in the visions 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 37 



of the superman. Nietzsche, strange as it may 
seem, was not interested in physical wars, but in a 
sort of distorted "spiritual" struggle. He was wont 
to call himself, not a good German, but "a good 
European," and his idea of kultur, with all its limi- 
tations and error, he claimed transcended national 
boundaries, and looked only to the production of 
the superman — the highest type among all peoples. 

Nietzsche's "philosophy" at times is crude read- 
ing, barbaric and inhuman, but his works in toto 
give one an entirely different impression of his 
views and beliefs, than isolated extracts. It is, how- 
ever, a fact that the Prussian spirit has, to a great 
extent, been crystalized around certain sweeping 
statements of Nietzsche, although the wild and pas- 
sionate seer would turn in his grave at the claims 
which German hultur, in gross ignorance, is parad- 
ing with such fierce and intense conviction before 
the civilized world today. Nietzsche, who has tra- 
vestied Darwinism, is known by his admiring Teu- 
tonic disciples as "The Philosopher of the Will to 
Power, and of Immoralism" Nietzsche was no 
lover of despotic Prussia and its ways, yet hating as 
he did her policy of mental serfdom and dynastic 
tyranny, he became her "prophet of the mailed fist," 
and one of her greatest apostles to preach the Gos- 
pel of Pride and Might; and by so doing, he fed 
fuel to the consuming militaristic flame, so destruc- 
tive of morals and the finer attributes of humanity. 

According to Nietzsche, good is whatever con- 
duces to the increase of one's power, evil is what- 
ever tends to diminish it. "Him whom ye do not 
teach to fly, teach — how to fall quicker." There is 
no room in life for the frail; the weak must be 
crushed and the sooner the better. The following 



38 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



quotation from Nietzsche's work on A Genealogy 
of Morals is a German classic. "These men (Teu- 
tonic supermen) who are strictly kept within 
bounds by good manners . . . who, in their be- 
havior to one another, show themselves so inventive 
in consideration, self-control, delicacy, loyalty, pride 
and friendship — these very men are, to the outside 
world, to things foreign and to foreign countries, 
little better than so many uncaged beasts of prey. 
Here they enjoy liberty from all social restraint 
. . . . and become rejoicing monsters, who go 
their way, after a hideous sequence of murder, con- 
flagration, violation, torture, with as much gaiety 
and equanimity as if they had merely taken part in 
some student gambols . . . Deep in the nature 
of these noble races there lurks unmistakably the 
beast of prey, the blond beast, lustfully roving in 
search of booty and victory." 

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche says, "We 
. . . believe that (man's) will to life had to be 
intensified into unconditional will to power; we hold 
that hardness, slavery, danger in the street and in 
the heart, secrecy, stoicism, arts of temptation and 
deviltry of all kinds; that everything evil, terrible, 
tyrannical, wild-beast-like and serpent-like in man, 
contributes to the elevation of a species, just as 
much as its opposite — and in saying this we do not 
even say enough." That which is admittedly evil 
must therefore be nurtured and even deified; that 
which is animal passion, — avarice, lust and hatred, 
— contribute as much to the elevation of man as 
altruism, self-sacrifice, human love and spiritual 
loyalty. Nietzsche also says in The Joyous Wisdom 
"Hatred delights in mischief, rapacity and ambi- 
tion, and whatever else is called evil, belongs to the 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 39 



marvelous economy of the conservation of the race. 
. . . In reality the evil impulses are just in as 
high a degree expedient, indispensable and conserv- 
ative of the species as the good," and in Zarathustra 
— Of Manly Prudence — he says, "Verily, ye good 
and just, much in you is laughable. ... I guess 
that you will call my superman 'devil.' " 

Professor Sombart expresses the profane thought 
of Pan- Germanism with a sacrilege that could 
never be encountered outside the realm of Teutonia, 
"Nietzsche was but the last of the . . . seers 
who, coming down from the heights of heaven, 
brought to us the tidings that there should be born 
from us the Son of God, whom in his language he 
called the Superman." The "Blond Beast"— The 
"Superman"— The "Son of God"— The Savior of 
the World. This illustration of German psychol- 
ogy is the acme of irreligious blasphemy and mental 
depravity. 

According to Nietzsche, pity is merely the cow- 
ard's acknowledgment of his weakness. For only 
inasmuch as man is devoid of fortitude in bearing 
his own sufferings, is he unable to contemplate with 
equanimity the sufferings of his fellow creatures. 
Since religion enjoins compassion with all forms of 
human misery, Germanism must make war on re- 
ligion. "Be hard," says Nietzsche, "the noblest only 
is perfectly hard," and he compares the charcoal 
with the diamond. If you have learned calmly to 
see others suffer, you are yourself able to endure 
distress with manly composure. "I warn you 
against pity; for it will one day arise a heavy cloud 
for men." It is only a step from indifference to the 
sufferings of others, to a desire to exploit them and 
even inflict pain and sorrow upon one's neighbors 



40 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



for the sake of personal or national gain. "Ye 
would perchance abolish suffering,'' exclaims Nietz- 
sche, "and we, — it seems that we would rather have 
it even greater and worse than it has ever been." 

Germany's territorial ambitions and her conduct 
as a conqueror are now well known. In 1905, in 
A Pan-German Germany, Reimer stated the Teu- 
tonic attitude, "Do small nations stand in the way 
of our expansion or do they not? In the latter case, 
let them develop as their nature prescribes; in the 
former case, it would be folly to spare them, for they 
would be like a wedge in our flesh, which we refrain 
from extracting only for their own sake. If we find 
ourselves forced to break up the historical form of a 
nation, we ought not to have any moral scruples or 
to think ourselves inhuman." In another chapter 
of the same book on the subject of Humanity, this 
apostle of Teutonic ruthlessness endeavors to prove 
that, whereas humanity may be all very well for 
inferior races, Germanism cannot be hampered by 
its restraints. In Grossdeutschland, Tannenberg 
says, "A policy of sentiment is folly. Enthusiasm 
for humanity is idiocy . . . right and wrong are 
notions needed in civil life only." And Carl Peters 
says, "It is foolish to talk of the rights of others; 
it is foolish to speak of a justice that should hinder 
us from doing to others what we do not ourselves 
wish to suffer from them." 

The intolerance and self-sufficient bigotry of the 
Germans in regard to a "prisoner province" is well 
illustrated by Treitschke's comment in regard to the 
forcibly annexed people of Alsace-Lorraine, "We 
Germans, who know both Germany and France, 
know what suits the Alsatians far better than that 
miserable people know themselves . . . We wish 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 41 



to restore to them, against their will, their own real 
self." How different is this intolerant and inhu- 
man spirit from that expressed in the report that 
Carnot laid before the French Government in re- 
gard to the incorporation of Monaco: — "It is the 
inalienable right of every nation to live apart from 
others, if it so pleases, or, for the vindication of 
their common interests, to unite with others, if such 
be its desire. We, French, who know no other sov- 
ereigns save the people themselves, have fraternity 
and not lordship as our system. We worship the 
principle that every nation, be the territory it occu- 
pies ever so small, is absolute master in its own 
house, and must, as regards its rights, be treated as 
equal with the greatest; and that nobody can justi- 
fiably violate its independence, unless its own is 
manifestly imperiled." This is a forecast of what 
international law will be, when dynasties are over- 
thrown and governments are truly democratic. It 
is founded on the fundamental principle of univer- 
sal justice and universal loyalty. Today it seems 
like a hazy ideal; before long it will be an accom- 
plished fact, and Germany is unconsciously and 
certainly unintentionally, hastening the advent of 
international justice and international peace. 

We read in the Hebrew scriptures (Joshua 9) 
that the chosen people of Yahweh who had made 
peace with certain peoples, instead of annihilating 
them, as was their usual custom, reluctantly honored 
their peace agreement, the princes of Israel saying, 
"Let them live ; but let them be hewers of wood and 
drawers of water unto all the congregation," i. e., 
slaves to the Israelites, whose militarism had awed 
the hearts of pacifistic peoples. Professor Rudolph 
Huch in Tagliche Rundschau shows the psycholog- 



42 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



ical similarity between the modern German "Intel- 
lectual Bodyguard" of the dynasty, and that of the 
primitive Israelites in their era of barbarism, prior 
to the advent of the ethical prophets : — "There are 
races which are incapable of attaining a high hu- 
manity, incapable of influencing the world. Such 
nations are destined to hew wood and draw water 
for dominant nations. If they cannot fill this in- 
ferior office, they must perish." In other words, 
Belgium, Poland, Servia, etc., and before long Hol- 
land, Denmark, etc., must choose between serfdom 
and extermination. But the German conception of 
peoples destined to be "hewers of wood and draw- 
ers of water" is not limited to small or relatively 
weak nations. Professor Huch denounces Anglo- 
Saxon and Latin peoples. He calls the British 
"false, cruel and criminal," and says that the French 
have proven themselves to be barbarians. "I, for 
my part, am convinced that the French are doomed 
to perdition" (i. e., to become a subject-race — hew- 
ers of wood and drawers of water — )"and I feel 
myself free of every emotion of regret." Ludwig 
Woltmann said, "The German race is called to 
bind the earth under its control, to exploit the nat- 
ural resources and the physical powers of man, to 
use the passive races in subordinate capacity for the 
development of its kultur," and an East Prussian 
educator boldly said, (July, 1917) "The whole his- 
tory of the world is neither more nor less than a 
preparation for the time when it shall please God 
to allow the affairs of the universe to be in German 
hands." 

Treitschke, one of the most influential of Ger- 
many's historical and political thinkers and named 
by Kaiser Wilhelm II "Our greatest national his- 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 43 



torian," in Politics wrote of the necessity of Ger- 
manizing certain territories, but in regard to other 
lands to be subjugated be says, "No other course is 
open to us but to keep the subject-race in as un- 
civilized a condition as possible, and thus prevent 
them from becoming a danger to their conquerors." 
Reimer ridicules the idea of a people deserving 
peace and developing a spirit of love and sympathy 
for mankind; all such talk, he affirms, "must re- 
main nothing but chatter." Vierordt gives the mes- 
sage of nationalistic Germany to the world in the 
following hateful words, void of all religion and 
humanity: — "O Germany, hate now! Arm thyself 
in steel and pierce with thy bayonet the heart of 
every foe; no prisoners! Lock all their lips in 
silence; turn our neighbors' lands into desert." 
Could anything be more diabolical, or more pro- 
phetic, or more peculiarly German ? Pastor Lahusen 
said, "We will fight without scruple and employ all 
means of destruction however terrible they may be," 
and Pastor Baumgarten, in an address on The Ser- 
mon on the Mount, shows the hopelessness of the 
German national mind in the realm of ethics, when 
he said, "Whoever cannot prevail upon himself to 
approve from the bottom of his heart the sinking 
of the Lusitania . . . and give himself up to hon- 
est delight at this victorious exploit of German de- 
fensive power, — him we judge to be no true Ger- 
man." 

We have become a nation of wrath; we think only of the 
war. * * # 

We execute God Almighty's will, and the edicts of His 
justice, 

We will fulfil, imbued with holy rage, in vengeance upon 
the ungodly. 



44 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



God calls us to murderous battles, even if worlds should 
thereby fall to ruins. 

* * * 

We are woven together like the chastening lash of war; 

we flame aloft like the lightning; 
Like gardens of roses our wounds blossom at the Gate of 

Heaven. 

We thank thee, Lord God. Thy wrathful call obliterates 

our sinful nature; 
With thine iron rod we smite all our enemies in the face." 

— F. Philippi. 

The effect of German "immoralism" expressed 
by Pan-Germanism has numbed the soul of a great 
people, perverted their national and individualistic 
conscience and plunged the empire into a condition 
of moral anarchy. German statesmen have shown 
themselves as diabolically ruthless as the military 
leaders and the soldiery. German policy has de- 
generated to a maze of contradictions, absolutely 
void of either consistency or good faith. German 
officialdom has now openly and completely accepted 
the pernicious doctrine that the state is above all 
law, and is therefore free from all moral restraints. 

One of the few Germans who has had sufficient 
intelligence and courage to oppose Prussian meth- 
ods, is Dr. Willi elm Muhlon, a scholar and success- 
ful business man, and, for several years prior to 
1915, a Director of Krupps. Commenting, soon 
after the outbreak of the war, on the perversion of 
moral values to which the German mind has become 
so hardened, Muhlon wrote, "Today some artifice 
must be resorted to in order that the sheep 
herded within the German fold shall contentedly be 
converted into an army of elephants, whose feet are 
to trample down every living thing beyond our bor- 
ders. This training is administered in many ways. 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 45 



They tell the people that state morality and private 
morality operate and must operate in two entirely 
different spheres. At the same time an example 
of the greatest piety is set. From the balconies of 
palaces, from all the offices of ministries, from all 
army quarters and camps, we have in the past few 
weeks been continually admonished to stream into 
the churches, to throw ourselves on our knees, and 
to invoke a righteous God, who guides our cause 
and protects us, the attacked and the persecuted ; to 
praise the German God who will lead us victori- 
ously over the entire world, because He can find 
no better use for the garden of His creation than 
that we should fill it with our military camp-fires. 
I hope there are many who do not kneel and who 
do not pray — at least to such a God and for such 
things. Better to sit quietly and meditate, and to 
manifest later in self -deliberation the power and 
the faith which we now manifest in slavery. Dis- 
gusting hypocrisy and deceit, contempt for the peo- 
ple and an uneasy criminal conscience manifest them- 
selves in this official piety. It has no other purpose 
than the sanctification of falsehood, the adoration 
of brutality, the deification of Wilhelm 11." 

Immoralism, the pseudo-philosophy of the Ger- 
man leaders of today, is naturally void of both 
honor and intellectual self-respect, and the whole 
structure of Prussian-inspired Pan- Germanism is 
based on guile, falsehood and perfidy, void of all 
real loyalty and is therefore doomed to destruction. 

Muhlon wrote in his diary on August 29th, 1914, 
that Prussia can never bring peace to Europe. "The 
Prussia of today can only sow a deeper hate among 
the European peoples and aggravate that hate into 
an obsession. She will steal everything — everything 



46 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



she can lay her hands on — and will hold fast to it. 
She will give away only what she attaches no im- 
portance to, and will make such gifts only at the 
expense of others. She will never take her foot 
off the neck of the conquered. She will force every 
alien civilization to reverence her barbarity. She 
believes only in the strong fist at home and abroad. 
She recognizes no power on earth but the power of 
compulsion." Under date of August 25th, 1914, 
Muhlon wrote, "The Germans have faith in their 
numerical superiority and their better military 
equipment. They do not believe, in fact, that they 
will win through bravery, strength, skill, or any 
other special moral quality. They are satisfied as 
soon as they may hope to have superior numbers 
. . . It does not occur to them to be ashamed of 
their great superiority in numbers, when they use it 
to crush a weak opponent like Belgium. They cele- 
brate their achievements the more loudly and joy- 
ously, the greater their assurance is of overwhelm- 
ing strength. They are like barbarians who become 
intoxicated with victory, even if it has been achieved 
at the expense of defenseless opponents. With wild 
hurrahs they are already distributing in their tents 
the treasures and the captives taken as booty. But 
if a strong, courageous enemy of whose approach 
in their hour of victory they had had no warning 
should surprise them, they would again take hasty 
flight to their swamps and forests and would be as 
content with these as they were formerly eager to 
roam all over the earth, mere vagrants, without any 
understanding of distances or world-relationship." 
And again, "With these raging barbarians (Prusso- 
Germans) progress and humanity count for noth- 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 47 



ing any more. Brutal force, not intellect; men 
(quantity), not quality are the deciding factors." 

Under date of August 31st, 1914, Miihlon wrote, 
"As long as the aims and ends of politics are not at 
one with the plain fundamentals of general human 
morals, so long will statesmanship remain a crimi- 
nal trade. Today the dogma obtains with all the 
servants of the state that their highest duty is to be 
useful to the state. This obligation sanctifies all 
means. Perfidy, lying, forgery, deception, treach- 
ery, corruption and murder are no longer loathed 
where the state is concerned. But whence do we 
derive the right to set the state to which we belong 
above other states and peoples, and to consider 
its interests superior to the clearest moral com- 
mands? Are we first of all human beings? Have 
we not the same duty to perform to all men? The 
state idea in its present-day form separates men 
artificially from one another and creates all sorts of 
hateful distinctions between them. The modern 
state wishes its subjects to be, in relation to other 
peoples, brutal, covetous, envious, obtuse and big- 
oted. . . . If we want to restore to mankind its 
most essential basis — which is mutual confidence — 
we must, above all things, combat the idea that there 
may be a different morality for different individuals 
or for different human institutions. Equality in 
this respect must be the rule. If states lose thereby 
in sharpness and individuality of outline, it will be 
all the better for the world. . . . You cannot ap- 
peal to the sense of justice of the people when you 
ask it to defend the unrighteous conduct of the 
state." 

William L. McPherson well says that Miihlon, 
a real German patriot, in his diary written July- 



48 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



November, 1914, has indicted the whole political, 
social and moral structure of modern Germany. 
4 4 He has arraigned its governmental system repres- 
sive of individualism, of freedom of speech and inde- 
pendence of thought ; its abhorrent conception of a 
state superior to human feelings and moral laws; 
its deliberate policy of military aggrandizement ; its 
paganism ; the greed and arrogance of German in- 
dustrialism ; the sterility of German intellectualism ; 
the degradation of the German press; the servility 
and hypocrisy of German social life — in short, the 
many-sided degeneration of the German character." 

Germany is cursed today by its intolerant and 
exclusive nationalism. Its people are patriotic, but 
their loyalty is restricted to country, and their Pan- 
German ideals have been forced into their minds 
and kept there by the state through every conceiv- 
able means of education and propaganda. The case 
of Germany is a case for an alienist, for the minds 
of the people have been guided, guarded and forced 
by external authority into an irresponsible condi- 
tion. They are not an uncivilized people, but are 
obsessed with a "philosophy" of scientific savagery; 
in their personal relations they are as human as 
many other great peoples, but collectively, acting 
as a state, they suffer with a tragic mania analogous 
to those mental epidemics of the Middle Ages when 
fanaticism, usually religious, sent entire communi- 
ties into various forms of madness. It has been well 
said, "Prussia puts its uniform not only on German 
bodies but on their brains. China built a stone wall ; 
Germany a wall of the mind." 

The German Intellectuals — professors, teachers, 
writers and pastors, glibly repeat with the unvary- 
ing monotony of enfettered and benumbed minds, 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 49 



the creeds and confessions of faith of Hohenzollern- 
ism. Prussianism is analogous in the secular sphere 
to the sacerdotalism of the days of irreligious super- 
stition, and the written or spoken words of Prusso- 
German Intellectuals are merely the incantations 
of a mentally stupefied corps of dynastic serfs who 
blindly obey their lord and master, and with atro- 
phied minds or with time-serving unscrupulousness, 
repeat in their sphere of influence as "authorities," 
the messages which they have received from their 
Emperor — the anointed of God. 

The German writer of J' Accuse! has well said, 
"As the dervishes in the East, for hours at a time, 
utter the same formulae of prayer and go through 
the same contortions . . . until at last they fall 
down foaming at the mouth and overpowered, so 
now we have seen the learned men of Germany re- 
peating for months (years) past the same patriotic 
litanies, the same unproved assertions — assertions 
of which the contrary is proved. . . . They over- 
power themselves with their own phrases, until they 
foam at the mouth from sheer patriotism, and fall 
down in adoration of themselves. But they will in 
time awake from their stupefaction and the wild in- 
toxication will be followed by the terrible discom- 
fort of returning sobriety." 

The Utopia of Prussianism lies on the sea of 
death; if a nation devoted to the false ideal does not 
save itself by the promptings of the soul of its peo- 
ple, it is doomed to utter extinction. The German 
people alone can save themselves; the steady driv- 
ing and subtle application of authoritative thought 
for many decades, have made a people so politically 
docile and amazingly credulous that it will take a 
severe mental shock to arouse them from their ob- 
session and convince them of their folly. 



III. 



The Hohenzollern Curse 

PRINCE VON BULOW well defined the 
aspirations of Hohenzollernism when he said, 
"The Kaiser first in Prussia, Prussia first in 
Germany, and Germany first in the world." This 
is the sort of subtle, authoritative suggestion that 
has obsessed and poisoned German minds. A na- 
tionalism founded upon militarism and supported 
by the army, has created an autocracy of the sword 
that makes the despot possible. National arrogance 
and intolerance, the result of a religion of national- 
ism and a philosophy of force, have numbed the 
soul of a people and entrusted the well-being of a 
great nation to a fanatical advocate of blood and 
iron, who stands for "War, conquest, and world 
dominion" and claims the "divine right" to rule and 
kill. 

Pan-Germanism has made militaristic Germany 
possible, and the army keeps the Kaiser on his 
bloody throne. When Wilhelm II ascended the 
throne (July 15th, 1888) he first addressed a proc- 
lamation to his army in which he said, "We belong 
together, I and my army, so we were born together, 
and so will we firmly and inseparably hold fast to 
one another, whether it is God's will to give us 
peace or storm." In Germany everything is mobil- 
ized, even religion, so the Kaiser becomes the mouth- 
piece and instrument of God. "We Hohenzollerns 
take our crown from God alone. . . . The spirit 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 51 



of the Lord has descended upon me because I am 
Emperor of the Germans. I am the instrument of 
the Almighty ! I am His sword, His agent. . . . 
Woe and death to all those who shall oppose my 
will! Woe and death to those who do not believe 
in my mission! . . . Let them perish, all the 
enemies of the German people! God demands 
their destruction! God, who by my mouth, bids 
you (the army) do His will." Thus speaks the 
guiding spirit in the most monstrous crime of all 
ages, Thus speaks the despot whose bloody hands 
are reaching for the throat of democracy, and who 
has the effrontery and depravity to connect God's 
name with the unrestrained passion and ambition 
of the Blond Beast of Prussia. 

This bombastic monarch of a warrior dynasty, 
breathing fire and threatening with blood and iron, 
is the latest of a line of militaristic emperors, every 
one of whom, since Frederick Wilhelm (1640-1688) 
first organized the army, has died in his comfortable 
bed. Since the days of Frederick the Great, these 
Hohenzollerns, who have caused the death of mil- 
lions of innocent men — victims of their ruthless 
avarice and diabolical ambitions, have fought by 
proxy and in positions of absolute safety, for, where- 
as the lives of all other men are of no importance, 
their own lives are sacred — to themselves. The 
German Crown Prince, Wilhelm, who talks of "a 
place in the sun" and urges as a motto pro patria et 
gloria, said in an address to his Danzig Hussars, 
"It is possible for me to be separated from you, but 
my heart and my spirit remain yours. If, some day, 
the Emperor calls and the bugle sounds the 'charge,' 
then I ask you to think of him whose most ardent 
wish it has always been to be allowed to share at 



52 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



your side this supreme moment of a soldier's happi- 
ness." The bugle sounded. At last donnerwetter! 
it became the real thing, — the fight that the fire- 
eating Crown Prince, the undisputed leader of the 
German Chauvinists, desired above all things in the 
world. The Deathshead Hussars charged into 
death and were mown down like stalks of corn. 
"But where," a German writer has asked, "was the 
gallant royal Colonel of cavalry? Why did he, 
who still today wears the effective uniform of his 
hussars, not put himself at their head with a 'hur- 
rah,' against the enemy? Why did he allow to pass 
ungarnered the 'supreme moment of a soldier's 
happiness?' " Prince Wilhelm has not only kept 
himself in a place of safety, far in the rear, but with 
peculiarly dynastic egoism, has handicapped the 
German armies by his bad generalship. If he had 
not been the Emperor's son, he would long ago have 
been humiliated and removed from his command for 
incompetency. 

The Hohenzollerns are medieval in their ideas of 
war, with this exception, that in medieval times 
kings led their armies, — Noblesse oblige! History 
gives a long and impressive list of kings slain in bat- 
tle: Hardrada, of Norway, at Stamford bridge, 
1066 ; Harold of England, at Hastings, 1066 ; Rich- 
ard I, of England, besieging the castle of Chalus- 
Chabrol, 1199; John, of Bohemia, at Crecy in 
Picardy, 1346; Richard III, of England, at Bos- 
worth Field, 1485 ; James IV, of Scotland, at Flod- 
den Field, 1513; Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden, 
at Liitzen, 1632; Charles XII, of Sweden, at the 
siege of the Fortress of Friedrichshall, 1718; etc., 
etc. The Hohenzollerns must be credited with that 
degree of Prus so- German modernity which moves 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 53 



them to exercise their royal prerogative and stay 
behind in battle in a place of safety, while urging 
their men forward to death. The Hohenzollern 
doctrine of self-preservation is followed by the Prus- 
sian Junkers, and, therefore, by officers of the Im- 
perial German Army; whereas the officers of most 
national armies lead their men to battle, German 
officers keep in the rear of their forces and drive 
their men to fight ; the difference is significant. 

Pastor Drysander wired from Switzerland asking 
the German Emperor for a statement of the casual- 
ties sustained by the members of the Imperial fam- 
ily in the great war ; he stated that practically every 
family in Germany had lost some or many of their 
men and youths, and he would like to know in com- 
parison, how the ruling house of the land, and par- 
ticularly the Kaiser and his immediate family of 
six sons had fared. Of course Pastor Drysander 
is still waiting for a reply. An American wag has 
said that, for actual fighting purposes, all dynasties 
are drafted in Class 2SZ. Let the record stand and 
mark the rating hereafter, not only in military but 
in political life. If dynasties continue to maintain 
their thrones, and if at some future time "their su- 
perior blueblood should boil red in a combat," then 
it is to be hoped that the people will have the wis- 
dom to appreciate the philosophy of the old poem, 

"If Kings would show their might 
Let those who make the quarrel 
Be the only ones to fight." 

With psychological subtlety, Kaiser Wilhelm 
uses the possessive pronoun of the first person 
whenever he refers to any of the armed forces of 
Germany, and he reiterates on every possible occa- 



54 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



sion that the prime quality of a German soldier, or 
sailor of the fleet, must be loyalty to his "sacred" 
person, with unconditional, blind and unfaltering 
obedience ; and this not only in war but in times of 
peace, and not only in matters pertaining to the 
foreigner but also in the event of internal emer- 
gencies. The German army is a royal and imperial 
body-guard, an instrument to safeguard the dynasty 
of the Hohenzollerns, and a weapon to be used in 
their self-interest. 

Prior to the French Revolution, all armies were 
dynastic, and the soldiers fought not so much for 
love of country as from a sense of duty, and because 
they were recruited and paid to fight by their royal 
lords and masters. Armies were generally a hetero- 
geneous lot of mercenaries and adventurers, and, 
at times, were rented out by kings to fight in an in- 
ternational quarrel on the side of the highest bidder. 
The Revolution resulted in the nationalizing of the 
French army; the dynastic army of Louis XVI, 
which was composed of mere royal hirelings who 
fought for pay and from a sense of duty to their 
master, was replaced by an army of Frenchmen who 
loved their country and swore fealty, not to a mon- 
arch, but to their land and its Constitution. 

A national army is in reality an army of citizens, 
armed for the defense of their country; they not 
only have the duty and responsibility of defending 
their country, hut they also possess as citizens the 
right to express their part in the government of their 
country. The French Constitution of 1791 ex- 
presses the most worthy ideal of the first real Na- 
tional Army. "The French nation expressly de- 
clares that it renounces any idea of waging war with 
the intent of making conquests, and will never em- 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 55 



ploy its power against the liberty of another peo- 
ple." 

Napoleon found an immense army raised upon 
the basic idea of universal military service and ani- 
mated more by love of country than thought of pay 
or adventure. He perceived its power, abused the 
principle and intrinsic purpose that led to its for- 
mation, and betrayed the people. With devilish am- 
bition he proceeded to plans of conquest, and was 
soon waging dynastic wars of subjugation with an 
army made powerful by the cohesive and patriotic 
spirit of nationalism, grown fanatical and arrogant 
in power and military success. Napoleon took a 
citizen-army who believed, in their ignorance, that 
they were fighting for democracy, and with it built 
a dynasty. 

The first Prussian King, Frederick Wilhelm I, 
founded the standing dynastic army with which his 
grandson, Frederick the Great, constantly menaced 
Europe, and plunged most of the civilized world 
into a seven-year war. Napoleon's national army 
triumphed over all the dynastic armies it encoun- 
tered in its continental campaigns, and it was not 
until Stein, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had organ- 
ized for Prussia its first National Army, copied 
somewhat after the French pattern, that the victory 
of Prussia and her allies over Napoleon was ren- 
dered possible. 

The citizen army of France degenerated in na- 
tional idealism under Napoleon I ; until, under Na- 
poleon III, it unsuccessfully fought for positive 
dynastic interests. The Prussian Army was nation- 
alized in regard to its fighting spirit and permeated 
with a fervid devotion of the soldiers to their coun- 
try; it was not a real citizen army but a deceiving 



56 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



imitation of one, and its members were obsessed 
with the idea of Prussian supremacy and glorifica- 
tion. William I of Prussia defeated Austria in 
1866, and France under Napoleon III in 1870- 
1871; he entered Paris, obtained territorial gains 
and a large war indemnity, overthrew the Napo- 
leonic dynasty, and by so doing made France a real 
democracy with spirit and ideals, and for himself a 
powerful dynasty, built and sustained by an army 
carried away with a perverted sense of loyalty. It 
is this dynasty, with its despotic absolutism, that is 
trying to dam up the streams of human progress 
and must, therefore, be overthrown, like every other 
obstruction to true civilization that has had to be 
removed to make the path clear for the onward 
march of the people. 

The army of Germany is in reality feudal, not 
national; it is dynastic, not democratic. Delbriick 
in Eegierung und Vulkswille writes "Where lies, 
after all, the true power? It lies in arms. The ques- 
tion by which to decide the inner character of a state 
is, accordingly, always whom does the army obey?" 
Hermann Fernau has rightly said that the army is 
the basis and the most indispensable bulwark of 
a dynasty; every dynasty that has been brought 
into being by means of an army can only raise itself 
to power and prestige by the aid of an army, and 
cannot endure without a military protecting force. 
"The Prusso- German soldiers, as in bygone days, 
swear their oaths to the Colors, not upon the Con- 
stitution of their country, but to the King and Em- 
peror, as their War Lord, They swear according 
to Article 64 of the German Imperial Constitution, 
Ho render unconditional obedience to the orders of 
the Emperor/ " And, in order to put the matter 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 57 



beyond doubt, paragraph 108 of the Prussian Con- 
stitution expressly adds: "A swearing-in of the 
army upon the Constitution of the country does not 
take place." 

That the world has generally advanced in its ap- 
preciation and acknowledgment of the rights of 
man, is evidenced by the existing democratic forms 
of government in progressive states ; but that Teu- 
tonia is still living in the despotic atmosphere of the 
dark ages is evidenced by the Prussian Kaiser's 
dynastic and medieval attitude toward the German 
army. The contrast of these two view points is well 
illustrated by comparing a letter ordered to be writ- 
ten by Kaiser Wilhelm II to a German mother who 
has lost nine sons in the war, with the personal let- 
ter written by our President Lincoln to Mrs. Bixby, 
who had lost five sons in the civil war. The German 
letter ordered to be written by "God's anointed" 
reads: "His Majesty, the Kaiser hears that you 
have sacrificed nine sons in defense of the father- 
land in the present war. His Majesty is immensely 
gratified at the fact, and in recognition is pleased 
to send you his photograph with frame and auto- 
graph signature." When Lincoln was shown in 
the files of the War Department a statement of the 
Adjutant General of Massachusetts that a Mrs. 
Bixby had lost five sons on the field of battle, with 
a heart full of sorrow and real human sympathy, he 
wrote to her: "I feel how weak and fruitless must 
be any words of mine which should attempt to be- 
guile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. 
But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the 
consolation that may be found in the thanks of the 
Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heav- 
enly Father may assuage the anguish of your be- 



58 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



reavement and leave you only the cherished mem- 
ory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that 
must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon 
the altar of freedom." 

The great potentate who rules by "divine right" 
could not sacrifice his dignity for a moment; he 
could not write personally to a humble subject, but 
he orders that a letter be written. The Emperor 
"by the grace of God" does not express sorrow or 
sympathy with a heart-broken widow in her over- 
whelming bereavement, but is "immensely grati- 
fied," and poor Frau Meter, destitute and alone in 
the world, and an object of charity in Delmenhors- 
Oldenburg, receives from the greatest egoist of all 
time neither sympathy nor pecuniary relief, — only 
"his photograph." Lincoln was not "immensely 
gratified," he was deeply and sincerely grieved, and 
it never occurred to him that his "photograph with 
autograph signature" would relieve the desolation 
of Mrs. Bixby. 

The German army is not an instrument represen- 
tative of the will of the people and created for their 
use; it is of the people but it does not exist for the 
people, and is assuredly not controlled by the peo- 
ple. It is a powerful tool of the Emperor whose 
control of the army is absolute ; those who compose 
the army and defray its cost — the German citizens 
— have no voice whatsoever either in its organiza- 
tion, or in its employment. 

On November 23rd, 1891, Kaiser Wilhelm II, 
in addressing newly-sworn recruits, said, "More 
than ever before, unbelief and dissatisfaction lift 
their heads in the fatherland, and the occasion may 
arise when you will have to shoot or bayonet your 
own brothers and relatives. Then seal your allegi- 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 59 



ance with the sacrifice of your heart's blood." Here 
we have a brazen and diabolical advocacy of fidelity 
to King being placed far above loyalty to country, 
to ideals, to humanity, to one's fellows, to one's 
flesh and blood, and to one's loved ones. In ad- 
dressing the army, the Emperor insists primarily 
on the duty of obedience and unfaltering loyalty to 
himself. On one occasion, in addressing recruits, 
he remarked, "Your duty is not easy; it demands 
of you self-control and self-denial — the two highest 
qualities of the Christian, also unhmited obedience 
and submission to the will of your superiors. As I, 
Emperor and ruler, devote the whole of my action 
and ambitions to the fatherland, so you must devote 
your whole life to me; 3 and again, "There is but one 
law and that is my will!' 

At Breslau, on December 2nd, 1896, the German 
Kaiser declared to his soldiers, "The more people 
shelter themselves behind catch-words and party- 
considerations, the more firmly and securely do I 
count upon my army, and the more confidently do 
I hope that my army, either without or within my 
realm, will wait upon my wishes and my behests," 
and again, in addressing the troops at Berlin on 
November 16th, 1893, he said, "You have the honor 
to belong to my guard and to stand in and about 
my residence and my capital. You are called upon, 
in the first place, to protect me against internal and 
external foes," and again on June 15th, 1898, at 
Potsdam, "I assumed the crown with a heavy heart ; 
my capacity was everywhere doubted, and every- 
where I was wrongly judged. Only one had confi- 
dence in me, only one believed in me, and that was 
the army ; and, with its support, and trusting in our 
old God, I undertook my responsible office, knowing 



60 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



full well that the army is the mainstay of my coun- 
try and the chief pillar of the Prussian throne, to 
which God in His wisdom has summoned me." 

The people have no right in the choice of a ruler, 
the Kaiser rules despotically by God's will ; the peo- 
ple have no voice in military matters, for the army 
is the means which God uses to enforce His decrees 
and keep His divine representative on earth upon 
the German throne. "The soldiers and the army," 
said Wilhelm II, in Berlin, April 18th, 1891, "and 
not parliamentary majorities and resolutions have 
welded together the German empire. My trust I 
place in my army." And on October 11th, 1894, he 
remarked, "Just as at that time" (the reign of his 
grandfather, Wilhelm I) "so now, too, distrust and 
discord are rife among the people. The only pillar 
on which our empire rested then was the army. So 
it is today." No living monarch has said or done 
more to revive the medieval fetish of the "divine 
right" of kings than Wilhelm II of Germany. To 
his soldiers he recently said: "You think each day 
of your Emperor. Do not forget God," — a lesser, 
but still rather important potentate. 

In a speech at Konigsberg, on August 25th, 1910, 
Wilhelm II boldly and intolerantly asserted that 
his grandfather had "placed by his own right the 
crown of the kings of Prussia upon his head, once 
again laying stress upon the fact that it was con- 
ferred upon him by the grace of God alone, and not 
by parliaments, popular assemblies, or popular reso- 
lutions, and that he considered himself the chosen 
instrument of Heaven, and as such, performed his 
duties as regent and as ruler." This reminds one 
of the declaration of Louis XIV of France, who, 
Dulaure tells us, once interrupted a judge who used 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 61 



the expression "The King and the State," by pas- 
sionately saying, "The State! I am the state" This 
policy of despotic absolutism later led to the over- 
throw of the French dynasty which, like the Hohen- 
zollerns, had sought to enslave a great people. 
Gustav Freytag, in referring especially to the 
Hohenzollern dynasty, said, "To stand above oth- 
ers as the God of Battles and as the earthly Fate 
of hundreds of thousands, renders the best and 
noblest man at last susceptible to the hateful idea: 

I am the State!" 

Bethmann-Hollweg defended Emperor Wilhelm 

II against attacks in the Reichstag regarding his 
Konigsberg speech on divine right, and boldly said 
that "The Emperor's declarations as to the rights 
and duties of Prussian sovereigns were in no way 
incompatible with the Prussian Constitution, which 
did not recognize the sovereignty of the people." 
The Chancellor also said that "Prussia could not 
allow herself to be towed into the waters of Parlia- 
mentary government, while the power of the mon- 
archy remained unbroken. That power of the mon- 
archy which had always made it its proud tradition 
to be a kingdom for all, would not be tampered 
with." Prince von Biilow, the predecessor of 
Bethmann-Hollweg in office, in November, 1906, 
clearly stated his master's views, when he announced 
in the Reichstag that ministerial responsibility to 
the people or their elected representatives was im- 
possible in Germany. "The Ministers are not the 
organs of Parliament and its temporary majority. 
They are the men who possess the confidence of the 
crown, and the legislative ordinances are the ordi- 
nances of the government and the monarch." 

King Frederick Wilhelm IV of Prussia, (who 



62 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



reigned from 1840 to 1861 and went mad in 1857), 
was elected ''Hereditary Emperor of the Germans" 
by the Frankfort Diet in 1849. He refused the 
honor, which would have been quite nominal, on the 
ground that he could not accept it from the people 
— whom he also accused of being revolutionary in 
their democratic ideas, — but only from his peers, 
i. e., from princes of noble birth. This mental atti- 
tude is peculiarly Hohenzollern ; the masses of hu- 
manity and the common people are subjects and 
vassals, and as such have no rights in the choice of 
masters or of government. Kings acquire serfs by 
conquest and barter, and the slaves of dynasties, or 
the people who inhabit the territory of a king, can- 
not elect their masters or choose whom they will 
serve ; property cannot select its owner. The ruler 
of a people is determined by God, not by the popu- 
lar will of the people themselves. If states wish to 
consolidate or become federated in order to increase 
their power, then the decision in regard to the com- 
bination must be made only by the princes or rulers 
of the individual states, for such federation is some- 
thing in which, dynasties insist, the people should 
have absolutely no voice. 

The Prussian Kings always aspired to be Ger- 
man or Teuton Emperors, but they insisted on Im- 
perial power with the office ; an honorary title with 
nominal power was not appealing. Bismarck 
founded the German Empire for the Hohenzollerns 
on Machiavellian diplomacy and the Prussian 
sword. King Wilhelm IV refused the title of Em- 
peror at the hands of the people in 1849; in 1871 
King Wilhelm I, sword in hand, crowned himself 
German Emperor, not on German soil and not 
amid, or with the consent of the German people, 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 63 



but surrounded by his army in the land of a foreign 
power, and amidst the acclamation of German 
Princes. The militarism and the unscrupulous des- 
potic autocracy of Prussianism were fastened upon 
the rest of Germany by the sword, — by blood and 
iron ; and Prussian deference to authority, Prussian 
capacity for discipline, and Prussian concentration 
on material aims, supplanted the idealism and inde- 
pendence of Southern Germany, and became the 
leading principles and characteristics of the Ger- 
man Empire-State. 

The German Kaiser says he rules "by the grace 
of God alone, and not by Parliaments, popular as- 
semblies and popular resolutions." This statement 
is purely dynastic and is the spirit of an era long 
since past. There is a striking similarity in spirit 
between this saying and the famous words of Bis- 
marck uttered on his ascension to power in 1862, in 
which he described dynastic methods and fore- 
shadowed the future policy of the Hohenzollerns — 
(whom he alone lifted from humiliation to power) 
— "The great questions are to be settled not by 
speeches and majority resolutions, but by blood and 
iron," i. e., the great questions will not be presented 
at all to the Reichstag for discussion or action, but 
will be settled by the dynasty and the government, 
— or Ministers personally responsible to the dy- 
nasty, — and this by the threat of force or by the 
use of the army. The army is the instrument of 
the dynasty, not of the people; it is the tool of the 
King and Emperor, and will be used at home or 
abroad to enforce his will. 

It is interesting to learn more or less authorita- 
tively that the German God is today opposed to de- 
mocracy and universal suffrage in Prusso-Germany. 



64 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



Pastor Bohmerle in the Reichs-Gottes-Boten 
(which might be translated as "God's Imperial Pri- 
vate Wire") rejoicing over the defeat in the Prus- 
sian Landtag of the proposal for equal suffrage 
says, "We cannot regard it as anything less than a 
saving act of God. In this matter we have no parti- 
san interests, nor even political viewpoints, but only 
the interests of faith. We believe that it is in oppo- 
sition to every divine order to value all men upon an 
equal basis, and that such an act of irreligion would 
be bound to bring a curse upon us." Thus the Prus- 
sian church and state are centuries behind the lead- 
ing and progressive thought of the world, and far 
from the great American conception that "All men 
are created equal, that they are endowed by their 
Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among 
these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." 

In 1890, Wilhelm II arrogantly declared, "The 
Kaiser's will is the highest law." Ten years later 
he said, "Looking upon myself as the instrument of 
the Lord, without regard to the opinions or inten- 
tions of the day, I go my way." And again at Ber- 
lin in March, 1890, "One only is master within the 
Empire and I will tolerate no other. ... I 
heartily welcome those who wish to aid me in my 
endeavors, whoever they may be" (provided they 
become my serfs) , "but those who oppose me in my 
work I will crush." 

These words were particularly significant as they 
were uttered immediately after the young Emperor 
had humiliated Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, and 
the people's idol, and obtained his resignation from 
office, because Bismarck had a mind of his own and 
had frowned upon Wilhelm's foreign territorial 
ambitions, protested against his erratic talkative- 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 65 



ness and dramatic actions, and finally insisted on 
the Emperor's conformity to well-established rules 
and precedents. The final break came when, upon 
Wilhelm's return from a visit to the Turkish Sultan, 
Abdul-Hamid, which was the beginning of a con- 
nection that lead to the German domination of Tur- 
key, the Berlin-Bagdad railroad scheme and the 
Mittel-europa idea — the Emperor not only declared, 
in conversation with Bismarck, that there could only 
be one autocrat in Germany and he was determined 
to be that person, but even had the effrontery to 
question Bismarck's good taste and Imperial loy- 
alty in receiving democrats in his home. This was 
the last straw; Bismarck retorted that not even a 
German Emperor could dictate to him or his wife 
whom they should receive as guests in their draw- 
ing-room. Bismarck lived for several years to see 
how the Constitution, which he had himself created, 
worked in the hands of an impulsive and ambitious 
Emperor — more noted for indiscretion than for wis- 
dom — who was determined to be the absolute auto- 
crat of the realm. 

Bismarck saw that awful despotic power, for 
which he himself was responsible, pass into incom- 
petent, erratic and vainglorious hands, and he feared 
the inevitable outcome upon Germany and the rest 
of the world. "Not only military equipment," he 
wrote, in Reflections and Reminiscences, "but also a 
correct political eye will be required to guide the 
German ship of state through the currents of coali- 
tion to which we are exposed in consequence of our 
geographical position and our previous history. 
. . . Former rulers looked more to the capacity 
than the obedience of their advisers/ 3 (Bismarck's 
constitution really made the Minister and Chan- 



66 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



cellor, i. e., himself, the real despot) "if obedience 
alone is the criterion, then demands will be made 
upon the general ability of the monarch which even 
Frederick the Great himself would not satisfy, al- 
though in his time politics both in war and peace 
were less difficult than they are today." In his old 
age, realizing the dangers of the tyrannous system 
for which he was responsible, Bismarck made the 
remarkable avowal, "If I were not a Christian, I 
would be a Republican." 

After the dismissal of Bismarck, the Emperor 
announced that he was going to abandon the Bis- 
marckian traditions and inaugurate a world-policy 
instead of a European policy. "My course," he said, 
"is the right one and I shall follow it." Providence 
and the German God, he declared, had decreed that 
the German people under his guidance should lead 
the world, therefore he was determined that Ger- 
many must assert her power and must exercise her 
influence in every part of the globe. "We are the 
salt of the earth;" "I will lead you to glorious 
times." The German foreign policy since 1890 was 
expressed by the Emperor himself, "Nothing must 
henceforth be settled in the world without the inter- 
vention of Germany and the German Emperor. 
. . . I shall not rest until I have brought my 
fleet to the same standard as my army;" "The tri- 
dent ought to be in our fist." And again, "With- 
out Germany and the German Emperor no great 
decision dare henceforth be taken" in any part of 
the world. "To this end it is my duty and my finest 
privilege to use the proper and, if necessary, the 
most drastic means without fear of consequences." 
To the soldiers in reserve behind the battle front the 
Kaiser declared: "We are fighting the fight of light 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 67 



against darkness. . . . Our will is bent toward 
the good, and to the upright of spirit — the Germans 
— God will surely allot success," and Karl von Win- 
terstetten (Dr. Albrecht Ritter) writes (1914), 
"When the German Emperor is crowned with vic- 
tory, then what he promised us in his youthful days 
will stand forth as a great accomplished fact. 'I 
am leading you to days of glory.' Let us forget all 
our discontent of former times, and let us thank 
our fate, which has guided as through darkness into 
light. Henceforth the German shall be the proud- 
est and greatest man on earth." 

The German Kaiser places the army in relative 
importance far above the people, and this is but 
natural since his throne depends upon the army. 
The people might become so bold as to question 
and reason with him ; they might claim the ordinary 
and political and moral rights to which all peoples 
are entitled, but the army has been trained to 
obey, and is officered by a privileged military class 
to enforce obedience. When Wilhelm II ascended 
the throne, he first addressed his army, then his 
navy, and last of all— three days later — "my peo- 
ple." At Kiel, on December 3rd, 1894, he declared 
to his soldiers, "You wear the Emperor's coat, 
therefore you are raised above other men." And 
upon the occasion of addressing the Royal Guard 
in 1898, the German Kaiser said, "The most im- 
portant heritage which my noble grandfather and 
father left me is the army, and I received it with 
pride and joy. To it I addressed the first decree 
when I mounted the throne. . . . And upon 
leaving it, trusting our old God, I took up my 
heavy charge, knowing well that the army was 
the main support of my country, the main support 



68 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



of the Prussian throne, to which the decision of God 
has called me." 

At Berlin, on March 5th, 1890, Wilhelm II said 
that he saw "in the people and the country which 
I have inherited, a talent entrusted to me by God, 
which — as it is written in the Bible — it is my duty 
to increase." On April 21st, at Bremen, he 
remarked that what Germany had achieved was 
primarily due to the fact that "in our house we 
regard ourselves as appointed by God to reign 
over the peoples whom we have been called to rule, 
and to guide them in accordance with their welfare 
and the furtherance of their material and spiritual 
interests." At Berlin, on February 20th, 1891, 
Kaiser Wilhelm reiterated his divine mission and 
responsibility, "I regard my whole position and my 
mission as one entrusted to me by God, and I am 
called to execute the mandates of a Higher Being 
to whom I shall hereafter have to render account." 

To rule by "divine right" is to govern arbitrarily 
and oppose the real will of the people, by super- 
stition, and, if needs be, — by force. He who 
claims to rule as God's anointed or appointed rep- 
resentative is beyond the moral law of mortal man ; 
he enjoys intercourse with the Divine and can 
claim for himself peculiar guidance and a separate, 
lofty ethical code. It has been well said that the 
dynasty by God's grace is lawlessness reduced to 
legal form, and that dynasties endued with divine 
preogatives are adventurers ; their conception of the 
world and of humanity is primitive and pagan. 
"The purely instinctive impulse of dynasties is for 
self-preservation and self-aggrandizement." 

At Konigsberg, on September 6th, 1894, Wil- 
helm II said, "The descendant of him, who by his 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 69 



own right became sovereign duke in Prussia, will 
pursue the same paths as his immortal ancestor; 
just as the first king said, 'My crown, I have myself 
created,' and his illustrious son established his 
authority as a 'rock of bronze,' so do I, like my 
Imperial grandfather, represent the monarchy by 
divine right." Ever since the German Emperor 
dismissed Bismarck he has been the undisputed, 
absolute ruler of the realm, making and discarding 
his Ministers, as their policy diverged from his or 
became too unpopular. At every crisis, the will 
of the Kaiser is supreme, and he it is who makes 
the final decision, and outlines or approves of every 
policy and important act. He firmly believes not 
only that he is the ruler of Germany, but that all 
Germans are his vassals, and that it is their reli- 
gious duty to uncomplainingly and blindly, without 
comment or even individual thought, obey his every 
wish. "The King is King by God's grace and he 
is responsible only to the Lord." 

At Frankfort, in 1896, the Emperor said, "I 
call to mind the moment when my grandfather, as 
King by the grace of God, took the crown in one 
hand and the Imperial sword in the other, and gave 
honor to God alone, and from Him alone took the 
crown." And at Coblenz, on August 31st, 1897, 
the German Kaiser, talking of his grandfather, 
Wilhelm I, said, "He came forth from Coblenz 
on ascending the throne, as a chosen vessel of the 
Lord, and as such he regarded himself. For us 
ail, and especially for us Princes, he has once more 
lifted on high a jewel and endowed it with greater 
brilliancy, a jewel that we must keep high and holy; 
I mean the monarchy by God's grace. The mon- 
archy with its heavy duties, its never-ending, ever- 



70 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



continuing toil and labor, with its fearful responsi- 
bility to the Creator alone, from which no man, no 
minister, no house of deputies and no people can 
relieve its prince 

Kaiser Wilhelm II, on January 1st, 1900, 
expressed to the world his ambition for conquest 
by the power of might when he said, "You must 
in ceaseless labor offer all the powers of body and 
soul to the building up and development of our 
troops," and after speaking of the need of an effec- 
tive navy as well as army, if they are to be a domi- 
nant world-power, he adds that when both branches 
of the service are ready, "I hope to be in a position, 
firmly trusting in the leadership of God, to carry 
into effect the saying of Frederick Wilhelm I, 'If 
one wishes to decide anything in the world it 
cannot be done with the pen, unless the pen is 
supported by the force of the sword.' " 

Who are the Hohenzollerns who claim to be 
appointed by God to rule the world? They them- 
selves claim descent from a Count Thassilo — an 
obscure baron — who is said to have lived in the 
ninth century in a castle near Hechingen on the 
Zollern Heights. Ignoring all genealogical myths 
and unsubstantiated claims prompted by egoism, 
they are first definitely placed in history when they 
became connected with the land which is now part 
of Prussia. In 1415, Frederick Hohenzollern, the 
Burgrave (burg-graf, i. e., the governor of a castle or 
fortified town) of Nuremburg, and a man of good 
business ability, received from the Emperor Sigis- 
mund, of Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, 
for cash and in payment for services rendered, 
the sandy tract of land lying between the Middle 
Elbe and Lower Oder and stretching across their 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 71 



banks. This land was known as the Mark of Bran- 
denburg, — a Mark being a strip of land on the 
border of a country or frontier where, for national 
safety, the military power had to be maintained, 
Frederick Hohenzollern, the Governor of a town 
where he had little chance to further realize his 
ambition for power, therefore became a Margrave 
(Mark-graf, i. e., military governor of a part of 
the border) on the outskirts of the Empire where 
he could expand his domain at the expense of 
neighbors and foreigners, without directly antago- 
nizing his liege lord, the Emperor. With the aid 
of a family statute which made primogeniture the 
rule of succession for Brandenburg, the Hohenzol- 
lerns refused to follow the German custom of equal 
inheritance. Imbued with the idea of family great- 
ness and power, and by careful watching of 
opportunities, by purchases, covenants and mar- 
riage, in two centuries the domain of Brandenburg 
was quadrupled. When the Thirty-year War broke 
out and the modern history of Prussia began, the 
head of the Hohenzollern family, because of the 
business ability, thrift, far-sightedness and ambi- 
tions of his forefathers, and their success in politics, 
had become one of the seven Electors of the Em- 
pire, and held sway over an area almost as large 
as the state of Maine. 

After the war, Frederick Wilhelm (1640-1688), 
the great-grandfather of Frederick the Great, 
succeeded his father, the Elector George Wilhelm 
(1619-1640), a deplorably weak man; and vigor- 
ously pursuing the old Hohenzollern policy of 
family aggrandizement, earned for himself the 
title of the "Great Elector" and the place of the 
first hero of the Prussian state. Frederick Wilhelm 



72 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



is described as "coarse by nature, heartless in 
destroying opponents, treacherous in diplomatic 
negotiations, and entirely devoid of refinement." 
He organized the Prussian army and commenced 
to acquire territory and power by might, rather 
than follow the policy of his ancestors who had 
grown strong by thrift, politics and the use of their 
scheming brains. He took East Prussia from 
Poland and drove the Swedes out of the land. 

The son of the Great Elector was Frederick, 
weak and vain, who ruled from 1688 to 1713, and 
as a result of services rendered by his army to the 
Emperor, he prevailed upon him to make him 
King of Prussia in 1701. Frederick I crowned 
himself at Konigsburg, and Austria soon had cause 
to regret the means she adopted of paying a foolish, 
feeble and pompous noble for the use of his army. 
From the first the Crown aggrandized the Hohen- 
zollern dynasty. It concentrated their ambitions, 
enlarged their horizon and gave them, as the 
"Lord's anointed," a new claim upon the fidelity 
of their subjects. 

The son of Frederick I was Frederick Wilhelm I 
(1713-17^0), who finally established the royal 
power. He was a cruel bully, violent, rough and 
arrogant, and was determined to build up an in- 
vincible Military Machine for further conquest. 
He scoured all Europe in search of tall men for 
his armies, even selling the royal jewels and turn- 
ing the family plate into money in order to defray 
the cost. Frederick Wilhelm increased the Prus- 
sian army until it consisted of 83,000 well-trained 
men, which was- in those days a tremendous force for 
a country of two and a half million people. His son, 
Frederick II — the Great, — who ruled from 1740 to 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 73 



1786, inherited the army, still further developed 
it, and used it to acquire territory by force and 
as a constant menace to the peace of the world. 
Frederick II brutally wrenched Silesia from Maria 
Theresa, the helpless young Empress of Austria, 
without the pretense of an excuse, and the shameful 
partition of Poland was successfully begun. Mili- 
tarism, a forceful tool of unbridled ambition, prac- 
tically doubled the size of Prussia during the life- 
time of the powerful, much-talking but unprinci- 
pled, Frederick. The present Kaiser, his methods 
and aspirations have their prototype in Frederick 
II, five generations back, and the sixth king before 
him. 

It is true that "History repeats itself," but the 
civilized world of the twentieth century will not 
tolerate the high-handed, brutal methods of 1740- 
1763, and Wilhelm II will not succeed in bullying 
Europe as did his illustrious predecessor over a 
century and a half ago. "All the world knows 
what value to attach to the King of Prussia and his 
word," said Maria Theresa in 1742, "There is no 
sovereign in Europe who has not suffered from his 
perfidy. Under a despotism which repudiates 
every principle, the Prussian monarchy will one 
day be the source of infinite calamity, not only to 
Germany but to the whole of Europe" Was ever 
prophecy more literally fulfilled! But today it is 
not only the whole of Europe but the entire world 
that is involved in the calamity of the Prussian curse. 

Five centuries ago, the "divine right" Hohen- 
zollerns were thrifty and successful burghers; 
today, they affirm that they are chosen by God to 
dominate their fellows. The territory they ac- 
quired by purchase and shrewdness was a nucleus 



74 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



of an empire acquired by the sword, but to the 
mind of a Hohenzollern, the German Empire is 
their physical property, just as much as was the 
sandy tract originally acquired by Frederick 
Hohenzollern, the Burgrave of Nuremburg; and 
the German people are the slaves that go with the 
territory. 4 4 Why should I serve the Hohenzol- 
lerns?" Bismarck once exclaimed in wrath, after 
suffering deep humiliation at the hands of the 
young Emperor Wilhelm II, "My family is as 
good as theirs. We have been here longer than 
they have." This is undoubtedly true. The Bis- 
marck s were pure Brandenburgers and are known 
to have been prominent in the old Mark for at 
least two centuries before the first Hohenzollern 
became Margrave and lord of the territory, and 
Prince Bismarck's ancestors stood out against the 
rule of the Great Elector. The chief difference, 
however, arises from the fact that one yeoman was 
more shrewd in business deals than the other; he 
saved his money and bought the lordship of a 
manor; and because of this thrift, business judg- 
ment and inordinate ambition that later made 
everything in life subordinate to the passion for 
power, the Hohenzollerns — bourgeois ennobled in 
the Middle Ages, — fought the Hapsburgs in the 
eighteenth century, rivaled and humiliated them in 
the nineteenth, and made them their vassals as 
they sought to subjugate all the free people of the 
world, in the twentieth. 

The German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, has been 
likened to Attila the Hun, Genseric the Vandal, 
and Alaric the Visigoth, — all Germans. His aspi- 
rations and methods are also analagous to those of 
Temujin (1155-1227), who changed his name at 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 75 



the suggestion of "The Son of Heaven" to Genghis 
Khan, or Khan of Khans — the ruler over the whole 
earth. Genghis became world-famous for three 
things: (1) He was a conqueror with insatiable 
ambitions for territory and power. (2) His con- 
quests were always accompanied with acts of 
appalling, revolting and unequaled barbarity; — 
toward the end of his life it was his proud boast 
that he had destroyed six million human beings. 
(3) He was a religious man, and a stern believer 
in his Tribal and exclusive God. 

But Attila, the barbarian, "The Scourge of 
God," and in his era the most formidable foe to the 
civilization of Europe, (who by a strange coinci- 
dence was beaten at the Marne, 451 A. D., in his 
campaign for European dominion), Alaric and 
Genseric who sacked and pillaged Rome and gave 
Christendom, in the fifth century, a taste of what 
we now know as Prussianism, and Genghis Khan the 
unspeakable Mongol-Tartar-Hun, have all been 
eclipsed in devilish depravity by Wilhelm Hohen- 
zollern, King of Prussia by the grace of God, and 
Emperor of Germany by the iron will and treach- 
ery of Bismarck and the military prowess of 
Moltke. 

When Wilhelm II, soon after his accession 
visited Oscar II of Sweden, that shrewd and obser- 
vant King remarked, "The young German Kaiser 
is another Nero." This was no mere epithet; it 
was a character study in a phrase. Renan, in his 
Antichrist, describes Nero as "the vainest and most 
ridiculous sovereign whom ever the hazard of events 
has brought into the foreground of history. . . . 
In Nero there was something at once terrifying 
and grotesque, grandiose and absurd. . . . 



76 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



The fantasies of all centuries . . . were 
jostled chaotically together in his brain, the feeble 
brain of a mediocre but self-sufficient artist, to 
whom chance had granted the power to realize all 
his wildest dreams. . . . Imagine a man 
. . . a mixture of lunatic, lackey and actor 
invested with universal power, and charged with 
the task of governing the world! ... It was 
assured beforehand that a nature which was vain, 
cunning, filled with desire for the immense, the 
infinite, but lacking all judgment, would meet with 
deplorable shipwreck. . . . It is one of the 
glories of Gaul that the downfall of such a tyrant 
should have been her work;" It is another of the 
glories of Gaul that the modern reincarnation of 
Nero should also fall by her hand. The mad 
Roman Emperor died by his own hand (68 
A. D.), after being outlawed and declared by the 
Senate "an enemy of the Roman state and people ;" 
and there was a popular legend that a moment 
before his death "the earth trembled as if it 
were rent open, and the souls of all those whom 
he had slain came and hurled themselves upon 
him. . . . When the life that parallels his 
in many respects shall come to its end, what an 
endless procession of ghosts will arise, if that last 
parallel should be maintained!" 

The German Kaiser is an ecclesiastic, being the 
Head of the United Church of Prussia (Protes- 
tant) founded in 1614. King Frederick Wilhelm 
III of Prussia, under date of Sept. 27th, 1817, 
published an appeal to his people, recommending 
a union of the Reformed (Calvinistic) and Luth- 
eran churches. It met with much opposition, but 
what did the protest amount to, when ministers 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 77 



were cast into prison or forced into exile, and 
churches were opened and pastors placed over the 
people with the aid of the military? After the 
Revolution of 1848, the Constitution of Prussia 
declared, "Each religious community administers 
its own affairs independently;" the Roman Catho- 
lics and the separated Lutherans obtained some 
freedom, but the State Church, i. e., the original 
Reformed (Calvinistic) church of the Elector of 
Brandenburg and the Hohenzollerns, which had by 
force, bribe and fear absorbed the original Luth- 
erans, still remained fettered and controlled by the 
state. The German Protestant church, as well as 
the educational establishments, have been Prussian- 
ized, while the dynasty plays politics with the Cath- 
olics or clericals. It is significant that the incum- 
bent of the Roman Holy See today is a political 
Pope and not a spiritual Pope like his sublime pre- 
decessor, who was sickened unto death by this 
horrible war that has cursed the whole of Chris- 
tendom. 

The German Emperor who once stood in Pales- 
tine within sight of the Mount of Olives and 
preached a sermon breathing of Christian humility, 
did not hesitate, in order to advance the Pan- 
German Mittel-europa idea, to clasp in fraternal 
greeting the bloody hand of the unspeakable Turk, 
who has reveled in Armenian outrages and massa- 
cres. The Kaiser of "Christian" Germany trained 
and officered the Turkish army, ignored the Turk's 
persistent atrocities, and secured from him con- 
cessions for the Berlin to Bagdad railroad. 

Wilhelm II surpassed himself, however, when 
as a "Christian" monarch he addressed his soldiers 
on "the Yellow Peril" before they set out for China 



78 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



on a punitive expedition. "When you encounter 
the enemy you will defeat him. No quarter shall 
be given, no prisoners shall be taken. Let all who 
fall into your hands be at your mercy. Just as 
the Huns a thousand years ago, under the leader- 
ship of Attila, gained a reputation because of which 
they still live in history, so may the name of Ger- 
many become known in such manner in China that 
no Chinaman will ever again dare to look askance 
at a German." 

After suffering much humiliation, China had 
finally used force against Occidental interference 
with her religion, customs and mode of life, hence 
this campaign of extermination that only a savage 
could conceive. James M. Beck has said that the 
campaign "was planned against the most pacific 
and unagressive race, the Chinese, for it is sadly 
true that the one nation which has more than any 
other been inspired for two thousand years by the 
spirit of 'peace on earth' is the hermit nation into 
which, until the nineteenth century, the light of 
Christianity never shone." 

The German Emperor's address to the troops to 
be despatched to punish "The Heathen Chinese" 
is peculiarly Prussian, and the same general spirit 
is constantly in evidence in Prussian military cam- 
paigns. The Intellectuals of Germany, in 1914, 
announced to the world that "the German troops, 
with their iron discipline, will respect the personal 
property and liberty of the individual in Belgium," 
but the record of unspeakable atrocities of the 
modern Huns will never be effaced from the minds 
of men. In this connection, it is of interest to 
mention the Order of the day issued by Gen. Sten- 
ger, Commander of the 38th Brigade, Aug. 26th, 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 79 



1914: "Beginning with today, no more prisoners 
are to be taken. All prisoners are to be put to 
death. The wounded, whether armed or not, are 
to be put to death; prisoners even when they are 
organized in large units are to be put to death. 
No living man is to remain behind us." This order 
clearly indicates that the German army is officered 
by men who obey "their master's voice." 

Today, wherever the German flag flies, the 
Hohenzollen dynasty, as far as human power can 
reach, is practically omnipotent. A German may 
be an atheist, think and express what he pleases of 
God, advocate the most depraved morals and 
unethical conduct, but he must respect the Kaiser 
and revere his name ; he can believe what he pleases 
about any matter except the dynasty, state and 
Constitution, but if he desires to live in Germany 
as a "free" man and a respected citizen, he must 
maintain that the dynasty is appointed by God, 
that the state is a model to all the peoples of the 
world, and that the Constitution is an ideal one, 
perfect in its conception and wonderfully practical 
and successful in its operation. 

There is no room for any individual, unfet- 
tered mind in Germany; after the paroxysms 
which shook Europe with the spirit of democracy, 
there was a general exodus of genius from the land 
when the dynasty, with devilish subtlety, false 
promises and a hypocritical guile — 'hiding from 
vulgar gaze a malicious mailed fist, — mentally and 
positively enslaved a people and placed a nation 
firmly under the absolute and tyrannous domina- 
tion of a despotic dynasty. The great Kant, who 
had republican ideas and abhorred war, was 
severely reprimanded, humiliated and silenced by 



80 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



the King. Fichte, who gave to the German people, 
when in adversity and under French domination, 
much of the fine spirit that gave them victory in 
the Wars of Liberation, was made to hold his peace 
as Napoleonism waned. The dynasty would not 
tolerate the doctrines of individual rights and 
democracy to be preached within the realm. They 
affirmed that the state is everything and the indi- 
vidual nothing, and the dynasty is the state. The 
philosophers who maintained that the state exists 
for the individual, not the individual for the state, 
and that political freedom is the foundation of all 
true culture, were hounded and banished. 

Hegel's doctrine that the state is a divine entity 
and that man is a mere stone in the structure, and 
cannot know what is good for him, pleased the 
dynasty; Hegel was loaded with honors and his 
so-called philosophy became the intellectual foun- 
dation on which Prussianism, as it exists today, 
was firmly built. Bismarck well illustrated the 
Hegel idea in political action. Leibnitz, Kant, Less- 
ing, Fichte and Humboldt had expressed the 
essentially democratic belief that the state should 
stand for liberty and justice. Hegel's watchword 
was "State and Politics," and his successor, Treit- 
schke, went further still, threw away all semblance 
of a mask, and boldly taught "The State is Power," 
and "Power is the Might of the Sword." The 
dynasty persecuted the unfettered and free-think- 
ing, individualistic minds of Germany, and created 
an "intellectual terrorism;" but Hegel, Treitschke, 
S timer, Nietzsche and others gave the dynasty the 
philosophical and scientific justification it needed 
to serve its selfish ends, and German professors 
and German writers and leaders of thought in the 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 81 



Empire sold their souls and birthrights for a miser- 
able "mess of pottage" to become the subsidized 
intellectual body-guard of the Hohenzollerns. 

College professors and leading educators of Ger- 
many are state-appointed officials: Schopenhauer 
ironically observed that a government can never be 
expected to place in teachers' positions those who 
teach the opposite of that which forms the founda- 
tion of their governing authority. Such philoso- 
phers as Hegel and Schelling, he affirmed, do not 
live for philosophy, but by it, and therefore such 
men can never be seriously regarded by fair-minded 
men as unprejudiced searchers for truth. 

Hermann Fernau, a banished German, speaks of 
the Teutonic "Champion of Culture," the "intellec- 
tual lieutenant in theHohenzollern Guard, ready to 
obey at the word of command," and he writes, 
"German culture in the German Empire? No! A 
Ptolemic Cosmic system and superstitious theories 
which circle around the stationary level of their 
dynasty ; a graciously tolerated cloak of militarism ; 
a puerile phantom machine with 'energetic impera- 
tives' and thousands of empty phrases ; a Ptolemic 
religion of fawning mandarins; at the best, a mus- 
ing on pious sentiments and a splendid naivete of 
prophetic souls; here and there, perchance, a sub- 
servient attempt to curb the war-thirsty beast. 
Nothing more. . . . Among a hundred there 
is hardly one who dares to play the man; slaves, 
who carry their master's whips: pedants who 
belaud as liberty what all the rest of the world 
has long felt to be serfdom; acrobats and court 
jesters who are permitted by their guard lords to 
present all manner of burlesque of freedom to the 
people; . . . Learning without character, 



82 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



knowledge without conscience, organization with- 
out humanity, discipline without liberty, ideal 
without dignity; such is the result of a mental 
development that, commencing with the disappear- 
ance of Weimar Germanism and politically trained 
by Metternich, Bismarck and Wilhelm II, and, 
intellectually, by Hegel, Treitschke and their dis- 
ciples, could only play its part as a protecting 
power of the dynasty. It has shown the culmina- 
tion of this development in a complete victory of 
Potsdam over Weimar." 

And what has the German people to say of this 
Emperor who places the military before the civil 
population, who boldly asserts that the army is 
his own exclusive property and the "chief pillar 
of the Prussian throne," who perpetually reiterates 
in the swearing of recruits, "You have sworn me 
the oath of allegiance," and who gives as a watch- 
word, "With God for Kaiser and Empire." We 
read in the speeches of his ministers — whom, by 
the way, he himself appoints — such nauseating 
comments as "The German people must deem 
it an honor to wear the Kaiser's uniform and pro- 
tect the Kaiser's house." Or as an example of the 
invirile mentality of the obsessed people and the 
lackeyism of German ministers, we may cite the 
speech of the President of the Reichstag, Count 
von Ballestren, delivered on January 27th, 1900: 
"The Emperor understood his time; he said 'I 
live in the days of publicity and free speech and I 
will not be a so-called constitutional monarch who 
reigns and does not rule. I am convinced that it 
would not be agreeable to our glorious Emperor 
if he were asked to accept such a role. . . . 
Gentlemen, this ought to fill us with admiration, 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 83 



and we ought to thank Providence that we have 
in these times such an Emperor ; this should stimu- 
late us to the best of our ability, and, so far as our 
conviction allows it, to anticipate and further the 
great intentions of our Emperor." 

The German fatherland does not belong to the 
German people but to the German Emperor. The 
dynasty is all-powerful, and through the military 
caste and the army, the nobility, the domination of 
institutions and the tempting subsidizing bait of- 
fered to the genius and talented bourgeois, the Ger- 
man mind is subdued and enfettered. "Universal 
suffrage in Prusso- Germany," it has been well 
said, "is not a fact, but a pious fraud." The Reich- 
stag is not truly representative of the people, and 
even if Bismarck's Electoral Law and Regula- 
tions were changed so that every community would 
be represented in accordance with its actual popu- 
lation now, and not as it was half a century ago, 
yet this elected body of men would not be a ruling 
body, — it would be, as now, absolutely impotent. 
The Reichstag is continually being bulldozed, 
abused and ignored by the dynasty; it is in reality 
nothing but a mere debating society and "a will- 
fully bungled imitation of other Parliaments with 
a constantly menaced and circumscribed existence." 
The Reichstag is not a monument of democracy, 
but a false advertisement of a modernity of gov- 
ernment that does not exist. Whenever the Reich- 
stag has dared to act counter to the dictates of the 
dynasty, such as in 1878, with the Socialists' Law; 
in 1887, when it propounded the question of Im- 
perial or Parliamentary Army; in 1893, when it 
protested against persistent increase of armaments ; 
in 1907, when it objected to the German colonial 



84 THE GERMAN OBSESSION 



and world-policy; in all such cases it has been dis- 
solved and its ring-leaders censured by the dynasty 
in ways that have had a pronounced psychological 
effect on all who participated in the deliberation of 
the representative body. 

The Reichstag, in December, 1913, protested 
vigorously in regard to the Zabern incident, that 
the military should brutally overrule the civil 
authorities. A vote of censure was passed, but 
the guilty soldiery, instead of being disgraced, were 
decorated and congratulated by the dynasty. What 
justice in such a case could be expected in a country 
where the army is placed ahead of the civil popu- 
lation, where an officer is a superman, not subject 
to bourgeois laws and regulations, where a uniform 
and sabre command not only respect but homage, 
and where a rogue of a cobbler, by name Wilhelm 
Voigt, simply because he appeared in the stolen 
uniform of an army captain, could in 1906 so over- 
awe the Burgomaster of Kopenick (a small town 
near Berlin) and his secretary, that they handed 
over to the rascal the contents of the town treasury? 

Germany is ruled by a despot and a tyrant, and 
the Reichstag as it exists today is the wraith of 
an outrageous joke played on the German people 
by their Iron Chancellor. The subsidized writers 
of Germany are extremely careful to negative the 
idea that the German people have ever obtained 
any rights from their rulers by insisting upon 
them. Prof. Delbruck says, "In Germany, popu- 
lar representation arose because the government 
summoned it, and placed it side by side with itself," 
and Prof. Lamprecht adds, "The intention was to 
win by this means the support of the multitude of 
enthusiasts from German unity on behalf of a 
Prussianized central administration." The Reich- 



THE GERMAN OBSESSION 85 

stag exists in name as a representative body; it is 
said to cooperate with government. In reality it 
has no sovereign power and is the mere tool and the 
despised slave of the government, — which is the 
dynasty. The German Reichstag is the dynasty 
camouflaged; — a democratic mask of an absolute 
despotism. Occasionally a German writer openly 
says that the German people have as much voice 
in government as they are capable of exercising 
with wisdom, and Prince von Biilow in Imperial 
Germany writes, "It is an old mistake to want to 
gauge the concern of the nation in political affairs 
solely by the rights granted to the representatives 
of the people." 

The German Emperor is the Empire in inter- 
national matters; he has been given the right as 
President of the German "Eternal League" to 
declare "defensive" war and conclude peace, to 
enter into alliances and treaties and to accredit 
and appoint envoys. Such power goes only with 
a dynasty and makes for international discord and 
the enslaving of a people. The German Emperor 
is also empowered at any time, within any part of 
the Federal domain, to extinguish the civil authori- 
ties, the liberty of the press and free speech, pro- 
hibit meetings and travel, and entrust the military 
authorities (i. e., himself and his army), with the 
entire political life of the nation. This state of 
internal restriction and military domination, Burg- 
friederij has existed in Germany since July 31st, 
1914. Hermann Fernau, commenting on the abso- 
lutism of the German Emperor, has fittingly said 
that the first nineteen articles of the German Im- 
perial Constitution could be replaced by a single 
sentence, "The German Emperor is the God- 
appointed absolute Lord of Germany." 



I 



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